LIBRARY G SUMMEB STUDIES BIRDS AND BOOKS SUMMER STUDIES OF BIKDS AND BOOKS BY W. WABDE FOWLEK AUTHOR OF 'A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS,' ETC. Hontion MACMILLAN AND CO AND NEW YORK 1895 All rights reserved OLIVERO V. APLIN, ARTURO H. MACPHERSON, HERBERTO C. PLAYNE, AVIUM AUGUPISQUE AMICIS. 357786 OLIVERO V. APLIN, ARTURO H. MACPHERSON, HERBERTO C. PLAYNE, AVIUM AUCUPISQUE AMICIS. 357786 NOTE IN my last eight or nine long vacations I have occasionally found time to write a lecture for a Natural History Society, or a paper for Macmillan's Magazine. The present volume I doubt if I can justly call it a book consists of a selection of these lectures and papers. Most of them have been in print before, but where it seemed advisable I have altered and to some extent rewritten them. All were written in the leisure of summer days (counting September as a summer month), with the exception of the first, which I have prefixed as a kind of prologue to the rest. I should add that Chapter IV. was published last December in the form of a pamphlet by my friend Mr. Blackwell of Oxford. Chapter X. has to do neither with birds nor books. But the subject of that little memoir was all viii Summer Studies of Birds and Books his life in very close relation both with birds and ornithologists ; and as I am told that his biography gave pleasure to many of his old friends, I have allowed it to find a place in the volume. W. W. F. KINGHAM, OXON., 6th October 1894. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE GETTING READY 1 CHAPTER II To THE ENGSTLEN ALP ONCE MORE . . . .18 CHAPTER III AMONG THE BIRDS IN WALES . . . .46 CHAPTER IV THE MARSH WARBLER IN OXFORDSHIRE AND SWITZER- LAND . . . . . . .69 CHAPTER V A CHAPTER ON WAGTAILS . . . 96 CHAPTER VI ON THE SONGS OF BIRDS . .124 x Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAPTER VII PAGE ARISTOTLE ON BIKDS . . . . . . 163 CHAPTER VIII GILBERT WHITE OF SELBORNE ^ . . . . 203 CHAPTER IX BINDON HILL . . ... . . .226 CHAPTER X BILLY : A MEMOIR OF AN OLD FRIEND . . .244 CHAPTER XI DEPARTING BIRDS : AN EPILOGUE .... 260 CHAPTEE I GETTING KEADY A March Days Diary March Vlih, 1890. Life in a town is on the whole comfortable, convenient, and warm ; but how difficult it is there to get a sight of anything but your street, and a section of a cloudy heaven above it! You must be content to see your sunset caught by a church-steeple ; you search in vain for a cross street at the end of which the full blaze in the west can be enjoyed. You would hardly know, but for the weathercock, what wind is blowing, unless, indeed, it be a grim north-easter ; for the breeze that blows steadily in the country loses its way at the street- corner, and comes twisting round in most uncertain trepidation, trying to get quickly out of this un- wholesome labyrinth without regard to its proper direction. And you are quite in the dark as to what that wind is doing in the open country. Our & B I , v * .?; ':/ 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. street may be sloppy with a plaster of half-melted snow, while a mile out of the town all is fast bound in frost; and a man may con his books or his accounts unconscious of disturbance, while a full gale is roaring on the distant hill-top. To get out of a town usually needs something of a struggle, but the struggle does not last long. When the noisy chaos of the station has been left behind, we glide out into the fields with just that sensation of calm that I imagine a duck must feel when it slides softly into the water after a period of waddling and quacking. We can sit back and survey such part of the sky as the window of an English railway carriage reveals to us ; and almost at once we begin to divine that Nature is getting ready. For here and there, though it is but the middle of March, dark drifting curtains of filmy cloud are driven slantingly along the horizon by a wind from the south; and these are nothing less than the forerunners of April showers. The grass of the meadows is getting green, and the plough- lands are red or ochreous beyond their wont; and as we pass a certain familiar cutting I feel sure that the sweet violets are coming into bloom in the short turf above it. And when the half -hour of travel is over and we mount to the rail way -bridge and let our eyes wander in unobstructed freedom round the whole Getting Ready country-side, all these impressions are in an instant verified ; Nature is really getting ready for summer, and all things animate and inanimate are at work for her. A few weeks nay, a few days ago, as I walked up this same road, everything was still; hardly a human being was to be seen, and the country wore that dull and unvaried look that sunless days in winter always give it. Now there is life and stir all round us. At the inn by the station there is a sale of cattle, and the road is beset with bullocks and pigs, all afflicted with that perverseness which these occasions bring out in them so strikingly, to the detriment of the moral character of their drivers. From the other side of the hedge comes a sub- dued chorus of bleating, and now I see that three adventurous lambs, who have passed the age of infancy, have forced their way through a gap, and are trying to see something of the world in a busy high road. No shepherd is near, and I take on myself and a first delicious taste it is of country life to drive these children back into their nursery, and to fence up the gap with a stray stick or two out of the hedge. Then, as the road turns sharp and brings me face to face with the village at a half-inile's distance, I see black objects crossing the sky in every direction, but moving always either to or from the elms and sycamores that cluster round 4 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. the church tower. As the leafless trees stand out against the light, every nest is revealed ; and I see at once that the same change is going on which we have noticed of late years, that the Eooks are gradually leaving the once favourite elm, and that the competition for the favourite sycamore must be a very trying one this year. The tree is not a big one, but there are a score of nests in its highest branches. It is a middle-aged tree, robust and compact, while the elm, as the Eooks no doubt can guess by its increased swaying in a high wind, is verging towards the evening of its stately, unvexed existence. A little further up the road, on a warm bank facing the west, I see here and there the golden star of a celandine peeping rather shyly through the grass. Our country is high and rather bleak, and I have known some part of even April pass without a single celandine meeting my eye. When that does happen, I know that the keynote of spring is struck. I must go some way to find primroses or violets, and so it is that I look out for the celandine with far greater interest than for these. It is like the Chiffchaff among birds ; neither is very fashionable, but each is very convincing. Here are the village allotments, in two valuable fields of a dozen acres in all. Great is the change since I was last here. Then they were a sodden and Getting Ready 5 untidy prairie of old cabbage -stalks, occasionally varied by the ruins of a scarecrow some old hat or bonnet perched on the top of a pole, sloping west- wards to show the prevalence of east winds of late, or a string bedizened with fragments of colourless cloth and ribbon stretched between two crazy sticks. Now these allotments are full of living creatures, all getting something ready. The human beings women, many of them have already cleared away most of the cabbage-stalks ; and now in the sunlight the stretches of freshly-dug earth gleam rich and brown, nay, almost red, where the digging is only just finished. This same earth was in the dead of this damp winter a sodden sticky black crust, beaten hard with rain, and greasy with decaying vegetation ; now it is changed and fresh in colour, smell, and touch. Here too the Rooks are very busy so intent upon their work of clearing off grubs and worms from the newly -turned soil that they fear neither human beings, with whom at this time of year they seem to feel a fellowship of labour, nor the obsolete scarecrows which they have long treated with con- tempt. And over the allotments, at a well -main- tained height of seventy or eighty feet, the traffic of these black labourers is continuous and worth watching. From their trees they must pass over the allotments, and then over a little valley and 6 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. stream, to reach a vast extent of plough-land, which in two or three weeks they will be clearing of grubs for their young. At present many are still at work on the nests, and from meadow and plough-land alike they come home slowly, bearing burdens of all kinds, deposit them in the nests, and after a bit of wholesome quarrelling are off again at a far quicker speed. On a rainy day I have timed them each way, and found the return journey always much the slower of the two ; and well it may be, if they will persist in carrying articles three feet long, like yonder bird, whose efforts to convey himself and a long curved stick through a high wind result in a series of tacks and tumbles ludicrous to behold. Why did he seize it at one end, instead of in the middle ? There is one change, however, which has not taken place in the allotments ; and, as this is the solitary exception where everything is getting ready, it seems to demand a word. The gate by which every one has to enter a gate on that account much used and abused is what we expressively call here so very shackety that I should never suppose it capable of living through another season, if I had not already known it survive so many. It has been so often patched up that one might doubt, as the philosopher did of the sacred ship of Athens, whether it is any longer the same gate it was five Getting Ready years ago. It can be latched with a great effort, and then it hangs tolerably secure ; but no sooner is it unlatched than it subsides downwards in a palsied helplessness ; its timbers all seem to fall away from each other, and you have to drag it groaning through the mud before you can open a space sufficient to pass through. Its distemper is chronic, and no one seems to know what doctor to call in, or who is to pay him. Pitying this ancient and decrepit servant of the village, I myself usually jump over the low loose wall by the side of the gate-post; and here it was that one day I nearly put my foot on an open book which was lying on the top, with a couple of stones on the pages to keep them open at one place. I was in a hurry, jumped over it, and was going on ; but, thinking it an odd circumstance, I returned and looked at the book. It was an old Bible, without its cover and not indeed complete ; but it was open at the third chapter of Nehemiah, and my eyes fell upon these words : " Moreover the old gate repaired Jehoiada the son of Paseah, and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah ; they laid the beams thereof, and set up the doors thereof, and the locks thereof, and the bars thereof." There is much more to the same effect to be found in this chapter; and though no ardent Jehoiada, no thoroughgoing son of Besodeiah, has since then appeared in our allotments, this inar- 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. ticulate cry for help has produced at least a little fresh patching. Who it was who thus preferred to let his Bible speak for him I know not; probably some old fellow, for I doubt whether the rising generation, when once they arrive at the haven of the fourth standard, ever care to set out on their travels in anything that can be called a book, much less in that one which was the only spiritual guide, the only earthly literature, of their fathers for many ages. "What we borrow from a thousand books our fathers were forced to borrow from one " ; and our fathers are still living in their descendants in many a remote village. In the whole of the allotments this poor gate is the only object that is not being touched to-day by some kind of a newness of life, for even the stone wall itself can show a few stray weeds or grasses beginning to shoot out of its chinks. Let us leave it and stroll round the further fields before the sun leaves us ; it is quieter there, and we shall hear what birds are singing. The first song we hear is a Chaffinch's, and it is a song about which I have something to say. This bird has indeed for some time been getting its song ready, and now, in all the splendour of spring plumage, is singing it without a mistake all round us ; but do not suppose that it has been able to achieve this without hard practice. I have never Getting Ready seen the process described, and even of bird-lovers but few, I fancy, notice it ; so it may not be amiss to put it down here. It is usually in the first week of February that I catch the first feeble effort, on some sunny morning in the Broad Walk at Oxford ; but if the weather is fine I listen even earlier, and this year I heard the welcome sound on 31st January in the same place. To show how a single warm day will produce the same effect in different places, I may mention that a letter but just now received tells me that it was on the same morning that the Chaffinch began to sing at Cheltenham. Mr. E. J. Lowe, writing from Chepstow to Nature, a short time ago, stated that his chaffinches never quite dropped their song all this last warm winter ; and in South Wales I have heard a fragmentary version of it as early as 18th January. Very fragmentary indeed is it when I first hear it at Oxford. Let, me explain it by a comparison which may be startling, but is none the less useful. Some of my younger friends who have learnt a song or two from me know the Chaffinch as " the bowling bird," because the only strain it can sing resembles the normal action of a bowler at cricket. Two slowish steps, three or four quicker ones, and a delivery made with some effort, describe fairly the bowler's action ; two slowish notes, three or four quicker ones, and a jerk or twist of the voice a I o Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. quick rise and a fall also make up the full and normal song of the bird. Now, when the practice is beginning, it is just as if an old bowler who had been laid low, let us say by influenza this sickly season, were to find himself incapable of getting much beyond his first two steps. When he gets into the quicker ones he comes to grief from weak- ness, and the ball drops from his hand. So with the bird ; it is really more from the tone that I divine he is at work, than any recognition of the old familiar strain. But when I have once made sure, I listen and hear him struggling to get on a bit, rushing valiantly at his quick notes perhaps, and only stopping short at the final jerk. If the next morning be fine, I shall no doubt hear even this last crowning glory of his song feebly hinted at ; and then, having got so far, an ardent and assiduous bird, who wishes to be beforehand in his courting, will sit on the same branch for an hour together and "bowl" away in the wildest fashion, wide of the net at each delivery, frequently collapsing entirely in the middle of his action, but ever returning to the charge, determined to hit the wicket before he leaves his perch. I have often been the only audience while this has been going on, and once I remember laughing out loud at the absurdity of the per- formance. To any one who knows well the full and perfect song, there is nothing more comical in Getting Ready 1 1 nature; yet the bird is very much in earnest, for much of the coming season's happiness may depend on the results of this persistent practice. Why the Chaffinch should stand almost alone among birds in the trouble he has with his song, is more than I can explain ; I know at present but one other whose song is not almost perfect from the first day of singing. If I am to make a guess, it would be that this bird's song is curiously stereotyped to a particular form, which needs an effort each time it is gone through, and that to get it perfect a fair amount of warmth and bodily vigour is necessary ; while others, whose musical range is more elastic, can accommodate their voices to their bodily condition without producing ludicrous results. And I may call the Yellow-hammer as a witness to my theory ; for he, whose song is also stereotyped in one mould that which is familiar to us all as " a little bit of bread and no cheese," will rarely bring out his " cheese " in his first spring effort, and is at all times liable to drop it, if he be in a lazy or melancholy mood. Other birds are singing Thrushes, Eobins, Dun- nocks, Wrens, Greenfinches; whose voices, already perfect in execution, need no comment in this chapter. Let us notice what else is getting ready, in these fields that slope down to the brook. The Starlings seem to be in a state of transition, as be- 1 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. comes them about the equinox ; of course they have been getting ready for weeks, but some at least of them stick to their habits of the winter, for there are flights of them hurrying westward to their roosting- place beyond the hills, where the sun will soon be setting. Birds that can still do this have hardly yet begun to nest. It is really in the grass and the plough-land that I see most change since my last visit. This meadow slopes before me to the west, and the sun, now close on the hill-top, fills all the grass with light, making the old brown tufts stand out distinctly amid the fresh growth of to-day. Those old tufts remind me of snow, and of Keats's hare that " limped trembling through the frozen grass " ; these warm, green patches, of the boundless growth of buttercups that is to come, of exhausted cows on a hot June day, of all that wealth of summer rain that no farmer seems to be able to foretell and anticipate. Thought might wander on at will, but my eye catches a new token of business (in the real sense of that sorrily-handled word) in the abundant mole- heaps that crowd the slope a little farther on. These indefatigable little animals have been at work since January, when their favourite hunting- grounds suddenly showed an eruption of little brown hillocks ; and now you see here and there among these a small stick thrust into the ground, which Getting Ready i 3 marks the spot where a trap has been set. Numbers are caught (their death, let me say, is almost instant- aneous, for their lives seem to be always hanging by a very slender thread which can be broken by the slightest tap with a stick) ; but this seems to make little difference, and every morning shows a fresh eruption. Mark Pattison, who was fond of puzzling people, once told me that he had " posed " a distin- guished man of science by asking him why the moles in our vast Oxford water-meadows are not each winter destroyed by the floods. Certain it is that, in spite of the worst deluges we ever suffer there, the moles are on the spot again as soon as ever the water has cleared away. Ever since then I have kept an eye on the mole -heaps, and in fact have often wandered up and down these valleys, noticing their lie and order in the meadows ; and find that these wary creatures do not often trust themselves out of reach of all means of retreat to higher ground. They live for the most part in those pleasant gently- sloping fields that lie just above the flat alluvial meadows ; and here or in the adjoining hedgerows you find their winter homes huge mounds with a convenient series of passages, and with a warm nest of cut grass in a large chamber deep down in the centre. Hence they issue forth on hunting expedi- tions after worms in the water-meadows ; for worms and water are their two chief wants. Once or twice 1 4 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. I have found their fortresses in what at first looked a perilous spot, in the flat ground close to a stream ; but never in any place constantly liable to flood. And here, where we stand now, looking down on the little green valley with its brook, I can clearly dis- tinguish the parts where the water is apt to lie for a day or two in wet weather, by the entire absence of mole-heaps. And now the sun is behind the hill, and we will turn homewards by the path that skirts this ploughed field, whose freshly-harrowed surface shows red lights and shadows in the sunset, reminding me of the coat of a little red Devonshire cow. The deeps and hollows in that almost furry coat have a way of treating the sunshine which was a constant pleasure to me when staying at an Exmoor farmhouse ; and here is the same rough broken surface, changed from brown to various reds by the sunset behind me. Still more magical is the work of the sunset on the blue smoke that is now rising in every direction from the allotments, when the labourers are setting fire to the heaps of weeds they have been collecting. It drifts quietly away with the evening breeze, and spreads over the whole land ; and then, as the sun sets, a wonderful transformation scene takes place. All outlines lose their clearness; all strong colours become subdued ; all objects are seen through a soft veil of pale violet, which clothes the whole country- Getting Ready I 5 side in such a tissue of quiet russets and lilacs as I will not attempt to describe. It is this weed-burning which makes the dullest open country so beautiful in sunny evenings of March and September, and always forbids me to shut up my windows until the light has almost vanished, and I can see nothing but a flame breaking out here and there from a heap whose moisture has at last been exhausted in smoke. The process of getting ready involves the destruc- tion of old things, as well as the appearance of new ones. As with the vegetation of last year, so too with the human population of our village. One or two at least of our oldest plants are sure to fail and die before each spring comes round. In particular I miss one old acquaintance a gamekeeper in his younger days, who had a good deal to tell of birds and beasts, and will go down to posterity in Mr. Aplin's work on The Birds of Oxfordshire. He was fond, like the inimitable ancient maltster in Far from the Madding Crowd, of telling you of his great age, and I once asked him if he remembered anything of the Waterloo times. He looked round at me with the one eye he possessed, and said tentatively : " 'Twas Wellin'ton as won the prize at the battle o' Waterloo, wasn't it, sir ? " I assured him that his memory had not deceived him. " Ay," he went on, " but 'twas old Blucher (he pronounced the ' ch ' soft) as done all the vightin' ; 1 6 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. why, Wellin'ton was a-dancin' away at a ball till old Blucher come up ! " Where Mr. Cook got hold of these odds and ends of truth I have no idea. He is now gathered to his fathers, and has vanished away from us like the smoke. March 18th. Another beautiful and sunny morning, though the wind is veering round to the east. A stroll through the fields brings me to a hedge which has lately been lopped ; the superfluous branches are lying on the grass in bundles. It is one of our warmest spots, and I am always on the look-out for birds there. I have just been watching those birds of winter, the fieldfares, gathered in numbers on some trees, and chattering excitedly as if they were about to leave us. Suddenly a little brown thing flits out of one of the bundles of branches, hovers a minute in the air, and returns to shelter. There is not a bird among all our winter residents that would flit into the air like that, nor one that would creep among the twigs exactly as he is creeping now. Out he comes again, plays in the air for a second, and alights on another bundle a few yards further on. I have no longer any doubt, but my glass makes assurance doubly sure; it is the Chiffchaff, the first of our summer birds, the first traveller to reach us from Africa and the warm south. He seems to have divined that we have been early in Getting Ready 1 7 getting ready for him, and has accepted our invita- tion at an earlier date than I ever remember in these uplands. He has probably come up the valley, following the windings of the stream, where he can always find both insects and shelter. At this point he has left it, and is making his way up the hedges till he arrives at his last year's home, where he can await the later arrival of a bride; soon his merry double note will be heard from elm or wood-side, announcing that all is ready for her. CHAPTEK II TO THE ENGSTLEN ALP ONCE MORE I HAVE written of the Engstlen Alp before, and it may be that my readers have heard enough about it. I am nevertheless going to please myself, and to tell what I have met with, there and on the way thither, since A Year ivith the Birds was published in 1886. Up to that date I had no bird-loving companion in my mountain rambles, except my faithful old friend Johann Anderegg ; I had to identify all strange birds as well as I could, with the aid of public collections and standard works like that of Mr. Dresser. Of late I have twice been fortunate in the companion- ship of ornithologists : one a ripe scholar in the craft, whose eyes, ears, and note-book were ever in vigorous use ; the other a younger enthusiast, gifted with such powers of climbing and nest-finding as I have not been able to lay claim to these twenty years and more. Knowing where birds were to be looked for, I in each case contrived to satisfy almost all their aspirations ; and in return they dis- CHAP, ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 1 9 covered for me much that I had missed in former years. Englishmen now know something more of Alpine birds than they did eight years ago ; Mr. Seebohm, Mr. Howard Saunders, and Mr. Scott Wilson have all contributed to the subject, and the last-named in particular has thoroughly explored the Engstlen Alp in May. 1 But the world of travellers is still apt to find but little wild life in the Alps. Few can travel in May or June, when that life is in its fullest vigour ; our English holiday time is August, the very deadest month, for an ornithologist, in the whole year. I grieve for schools and schoolmasters, and think with regret of the good old time when there were but two terms in the school year, and we could throw our books away in mid-June. Would that I could take some school Natural History Society to the Alps before June is over, and give them a succes- sion of glorious field-days where Nature has but just awakened from her winter sleep, and lies in the sun undisturbed by tourists ! Every one would find work in abundance. Switzerland is indeed a wonderful country, and it is not only its mountains that are wonderful. Its history is wonderful : its system of government is wonderful : you can study man there if you will, as well as animals, or plants, or rocks. You never 1 Ibis, vol. xvii, p. 103. 2O Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. know what wonders may not meet you there. One year I suddenly found myself in a little revolution very small of its kind, like so many alpine plants, yet a complete and determined revolution, full of political interest. Once my way was blocked by the sudden breaking out of a great glacier lake, and next day I had to cut steps in ice which the rushing water had polished like a looking-glass. I have seen quiet lakes torn up into foam, lashed with rain, and illuminated with incessant lightning, and have been for an hour in a steamer in the very centre of the storm. You are constantly on the tracks of flood, and landslip, and avalanche; you see Nature working everywhere with a mighty hand. Yet in such a spot as the Engstlen Alp, on a fine June day, the rest, and peace, and fragrance are delicious. I have known the alp for twenty- three years, and, though it has seen its changes and is a trifle more civilised than of yore, I can enjoy it as well as ever before the crowds descend upon it. I venerate the name and memory of the man who first told me of it at Nancy in 18*71 ; I have never seen him since, but if he should chance to read these lines, I shall feel that I have discharged my debt to him. Let us then set out for the Engstlen Alp, noting on our way such objects as the ornithological ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 2 1 traveller would not care to miss. Even from the train window, as we cross those vast expanses of well -tilled land in Central France, something may be seen ere nightfall ; the Hen Harrier, for example, a fine bird now almost extinct in England, may be quartering the fields for his evening meal. Early in the morning, as the train winds slowly up the passes of the Jura on its way to Bern, you may form some idea of the common bird -population of the district ; Whinchats are in the hay-fields, Black Eedstarts on the chalets, and Dippers and Gray Wagtails by the swift streams we cross. At Biel, where we descend to the plain of Central Switzerland, it would be worth while to alight and spend a day or two of search by lake and river ; but if time be precious, and if we would see what the true Alps have to show us, it is better to go on, spending only a few hours at Bern a delay that will be well repaid. Bern is generally known as a city of bears of bears in stone, bears in wood, and live bears in a pit. But there are birds in Bern as well as bears. The town might well have Swifts on its coat of arms ; these birds rejoice in its bright, invigorating air. The streets and squares resound with their shrill voices, and they nest under the eaves of the hotel I frequent. These are of the common species ; but if you stand anywhere near the cathedral and 2 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. look up, you will see, generally higher in the air than the others, numbers of the splendid Alpine Swift, circling round with marvellous speed. You can tell this bird at once by his white belly, which almost glitters in the sunshine, and by the ease and dignity of his flight ; he does not use his wings so rapidly as the other, but sweeps along almost without an effort; and he does not scream so wildly, but whistles to his sitting mate as he sails around the tower, or utters a crescendo chatter, which seems to end fortissimo as he comes near to you. This first bird we meet with is such a noble one that I must dwell on it a little longer. It counts as a British bird, but has been rarely indeed found in our island. It should never be mistaken for the common species ; the white belly, and a brown band across the breast, mark it at once. The back, too, is much browner, as we noticed when they descended below the level of the famous cathedral terrace, and allowed us to watch them from above. These are surer tokens than the mere difference of size, for there is nothing more deceptive, sometimes even to an experienced eye, than the relative size of birds. The true homes of this Swift are among the mountains both of Europe and Asia, where it builds in caves and deep crevices of rocks. But, like some ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 23 others of its kind, it has found out in Bern and a few other cities that man's architecture suits it even better. What can be happier for such an aerial bird than to be able to sweep round and round a lofty tower unimpeded by walls of rock ? So it has come down from its mountains to the plain, and taken possession of the noble tower at Bern. There it builds a curious flat nest, formed of dried leaves, bits of paper, and of fir-bark, with a few feathers, on beams and ledges within the tower. Like the Chinese bird whose nest is eaten in the East, it secretes a saliva with which to glue these materials together; for in wind-swept caves and towers they could hardly be held together without some such device. The glutinous mass is very apparent in the nests exhibited in the Museum at Bern, which are hardly pleasing in appearance, being not unlike a series of ancient and gruesome cheesecakes well flattened. The eggs are pure white, and of an elongated oval shape. 1 When I was last at Bern we did not stay there long, but went on in the afternoon to the Hotel 1 Mr. Scott Wilson, who himself ascended the tower in 1885, has well described the nesting -places of this colony in the Ibis of April 1887. I extract a sentence or two: "The nests, of which we could see about twenty, were placed on the ledge which goes round the tower (i.e. inside), and about four feet below the main floor on which we were standing. . . . Sometimes there were three or four in the space of three yards, all placed on the same beam, and on most of the nests we could see an old bird sitting." 24 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. Bellevue at Thun, where there is an extensive garden. Next morning I was out before breakfast in this garden, and soon heard a voice that was new to me. If this happens after May, when all the foliage is out, I know I may be teased for a while, and so it happened that morning. Wherever I went, there was the mysterious voice clearly that of a very small bird, feeble and shrill, though contented and unobtrusive. Five little syllables of different length were constantly repeated, getting a little higher in pitch towards the end : "twee-twee- tw-twee-t." It was late in the morning when I found that it was nothing in the world but our common little Tree-creeper. Now, I can count on my fingers the number of times that I have heard the Creeper sing, and on those rare occasions in England I have never heard the notes I have just described. But there is no doubt that birds speak with a different accent in different localities ; the Chaffinch, for example, will do so, and I have been puzzled for a whole morning in Italy by a Chaffinch with a strange call-note, who would not show him- self. Let us note, by way of a possible explanation of this uttterance of the Creeper, which I have since heard elsewhere in Switzerland, that this bird does not migrate, but probably remains in the same district all' his life. Surely it would be more natural for non- migrating birds to develop some new habit ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 25 of speech, than for those which change their residence with the seasons. They are in a certain sense isolated species, and, like some of the birds which never leave our island, they may take up peculiarities of their own, in voice as well as colour. Just above the garden, on the wooded slopes which shelter it from the north, we heard another voice, which was familiar enough to me, though at the first moment on that occasion I misinterpreted it. It was seven years since I had first heard this song if song it may be called a quick sibilant trill, which I may describe to those who know the songs of birds as half-way between the song of the Wood -wren and that of the Lesser White- throat. When it first attracted me on the wooded hills above Meiringen, it seemed to be uttered in varying tones, now here, now there, and sometimes close to me ; but the singer would not show himself. Three years later I came to this same place again, and again heard the bird, and many others of his kind, and confirmed my earlier conjectures. He was Bonelli's Warbler (Phylloscopvs Bonelli), a near relation of our Chiffchaff, Willow-wren, and Wood- wren. He is a Wood - wren, with little of the Wood -wren's yellow tints; a Willow -wren, with a purer white breast and longer wings ; a Chiffchaff, with lighter coloured legs, and a rather longer body 26 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. and tail. He seems to come nearest to the Wood- wren among these three PTiylloscopi in two other particulars ; his song is not unlike the Wood-wren's " shivering " strain, and he uses no feathers in the lining of his domed nest. I found this nest in 1889, after a long hunt in wet grass in a wood; it was on very steep ground, in a hole under a projecting stone, and contained one egg, dull white in ground- colour, with rich chocolate -coloured spots, chiefly at the thicker end. At Thun my friend's sharp eyes found it almost directly, in a very similar position on steep ground in a wood ; the eggs had been already hatched. This modest little warbler is essentially the Phylloscopus of the Alps. Just as with us the Willow -wren is far the commonest of its group, and may seem almost to be crowding out the Chiffchaff and the Wood -wren, so in the Alps Bonelli is to be found everywhere, the other three only here and there. I have only heard the Willow -wren in the flat of the valleys, where Bonelli is not often to be found ; but on all shady hill -sides the latter is quite abundant, and you have him with you from the moment of leaving the valley, up to a height of four or even five thousand feet. This is clearly a hardy bird, and one that has been long known to be extending his range northwards. He is to be found in Southern ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 27 Germany, and even in Western France ; * and why should he not some day venture to cross the sea to England ? Let us hope that he will come in my time; for I count him as one of my especial favourites, and should be glad to think of him as included in our British list. On our way from Thun to Meiringen in 1891 we stayed a few hours at Interlaken ; but as I have described in another chapter how we discovered the Marsh Warbler's nest there, I will only delay to tell of one trifling incident which carries a moral with it. As we went down the road towards the marshy tracts by the Lake of Brienz I found a Yellow- hammer's nest, containing young, in a hedge by a much frequented path. It was within arm's length of every passer-by, and was as obvious as any nest could be, yet unmolested. No one takes nests and eggs in Switzerland, nor wishes to do so ; the habit seems never to have grown up among the boys. Mr. Howard Saunders, in his Swiss notes in the Ibis, tells of a Dipper's nest which he watched for several days at Lausanne, until some boys came and promptly tore it down. But who were these malefactors? Need it be said that they were British boys from a neighbouring cramming establishment, relieving their 1 My friend Mr. H. C. Playne found this bird near Lucon in April 1894 (Zoologist, August 1894). It has twice occurred on the wonderful island of Heligoland. 2 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. mental indigestion by giving the fling to their native barbarism ? At Interlaken, and again at Meiringen, which we reached that night, we paid special attention to the nests of the House-martins. My old friend Anderegg, who has lived at Meiringen all his life, has often told me that these birds always build there under the ledges of rocks, and never on houses ; and in fact the name by which they are known in the valley is Fliihspie or Eock- martin. As here and there in England, they have held to their original and natural habit, and have not been tempted by the buildings which man erects. But this year we were able to show Anderegg several nests built under the eaves against timber, and he was obliged to believe the evidence of his own eyes. It may be that this had been going on some time unnoticed by him; it had become a fixed idea in his mind that the bird builds in one way, and it would not occur to him that circumstances may possibly induce it to build in another. He would not be likely to reflect that a change in the character of human architecture may have led the Swallow tribe to take advantage of it. Now, within my own recollection of Meiringen there has been a marked improvement in the architecture, not indeed in the beauty of the buildings, but in their size and substantiality. When I first knew it, it consisted almost entirely of very ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 29 old sunburnt wooden houses; but about fourteen years ago it was destroyed by a great fire, and arose from its ashes a handsome village, with several great hotels of stone, and many large wooden houses sheltered by overhanging eaves. I think it is a fair guess that the Martins have begun to be attracted from their rocks by this change in the architecture, as their forefathers were long ago by the temples of the Greeks and Eomans, or as their American cousins by the buildings of European colonists. 1 If any of my readers should find themselves at Meiringen, let them make one easy expedition before they leave it for the Engstlen Alp. Let them take the train down the valley to Brierizwyler, and walk, as I did with old Anderegg and a friend last year, up the road which there leaves the valley for the Brlinig pass. We came to look for Crag-martins, which nest on steep cliffs above the road ; we barely saw a Crag-martin, but we found something even better. Here is my note written on the spot, as I sat under the baking sun by the roadside, watching the perpendicular cliffs above me. "A butterfly-like creature fluttered on to the face of the cliff, and wriggled sideways along it into a crevice ; then out again, and more wriggling ; then he took flight, looking like a large moth, and showing wings on which we could see white, and once or twice some 1 See below, p. 199 foil. 3O Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. crimson. This occurred twice, and it would be hard to get a better view." l It was a delightful moment, for this bird is perhaps the most singular, and in some ways the most beautiful, in all Europe. It is the Crimson- winged Wall-creeper (Tichodroma muraria), which I had looked for repeatedly in places where it was said to breed, with no such good success as I met with on the last day of June. This bird, we felt sure, was feeding young when we saw it, and those young ones may be there next summer to greet the eyes of travellers. We then followed the road to the pass, and leaving it there, we took a delightful route along the heights to the little hamlet of Hohfliih. This is the " fatherland " of the Woodpeckers ; and you may almost always hear the loud cry of the Great Black Woodpecker high among the pines, even if you fail to see him ; and if you will but wait a while among the ancient mossy sycamores, you can hardly fail to see the gray species (Picus canus), which is a total stranger to most Englishmen. This last bird has a hoarse cry which he repeats again and again as he nears you ; he thus lets you know where he is, and, 1 The crimson is on the wing-coverts, not on the quills ; it is there- fore visible even when the wings are folded. There is a well-known insect of the locust kind in the Alps which wears the same colours as the Wall-creeper, ash-gray and crimson ; but in this case the crimson is only visible when the creature is in motion. When it alights on a slaty rock, the gray colour acts as an infallible protection. ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 31 if you lie quiet, may come quite close to you. He is not so handsome a bird as our Green Woodpecker ; the colour he shows you is chiefly gray, with con- spicuous yellow above the tail. But it is time to begin our walk from Meiringen to the Engstlen Alp, and to escape, if we can, from the swarms of horse-flies which have been distracting us in every attempt to hold the glass steadily while looking at a bird ; for in a warm June Switzerland has its drawbacks as well as its delights. With these was a larger bee-like fly, the bite of which was no light matter ; and in 1893 these two pests were not only in the valleys, but at six and even seven thousand feet were still there to tease us, though in diminished numbers. Fortunately we found many insects on our route of a more friendly disposition. Butterflies showed themselves in marvellous num- bers, if not in great variety. Before we began the first steep ascent, the Camberwell Beauty and the two species of Swallowtails, with the larger of the two Apollos, were the most conspicuous ; then the Black-veined White (now almost extinct in England, though I used to catch it in Wales some thirty years ago), and the delicate little Wood White ; Fritillaries, Arguses, and Einglets were also in abundance. But the most astonishing of them all, in numbers at least, was the tiny little Bedford Blue (Polyom- 3 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. matus alsus), smallest of all British butterflies. We had found it in the deep valley of Meiringen ; we found it all the way up to the Engstlen Alp, more than four thousand feet higher ; it would collect in clusters on the path, in company with Skippers, and would pack so densely that a foot put down on the little crowd might have killed at least a score. And then again, when we had climbed above the alp to the highest region of all, from seven to eight thousand feet above sea -level, there it was still, flitting about among the patches of melting snow, and doubtless helping to fertilise the exquisite little alpine flowers. Why, one may ask, should these alpine flowers be so intensely bright and fragrant, growing as they do in so cold a climate and in such wild and rugged spots ? Mr. Wallace, in his Tropical Nature, 1 tells us that they need these bright colours in order to attract the butterflies that fertilise them. If it be true that butterflies are really the agents of this reproduction, the theory seems a natural one, and explains the facts. There are few butterflies as high up as eight thousand feet ; we saw, if I recollect right, only two species, the Bedford Blue and a small Fritillary, and these, though common, were not exactly abundant. There is probably, then, great competition for the services of these, and natural selection has been long and hard at work. The 1 Chapter vi. ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 33 brighter and sweeter flowers have survived, and these have tended to become ever brighter and sweeter. When I was here in June 1891, there were white and purple crocuses, pansies great and small, great carpets of pink primulas, purple auriculas which love to gather in a cluster under some rock or bridge, oxlips, forget-me-nots, globe-flowers, and gentians light blue and dark blue, studding the ground every- where. High up on the rocks and moraines it is the plants that cluster and form cushions which have come to the front in the competition ; nowhere else do you find such masses of bright colour as in this highest region of life. It looks almost as if the plants co- operated with each other in good-will to do the work of attraction : so lovingly and hopefully do they gather in certain spots. The Engstlen Alp, which all these flowers deck in early summer, is, I imagine, the terminal moraine of an ancient glacier once descending from the range of the Titlis, the bed of which is now in part occupied by the beautiful Engstlen lake. The rough and hillocky ground lying between the inn and the lake betrays its origin pretty plainly ; it is now covered with the alpine rhododendron, and on the tops of the hillocks are pine - trees of immense antiquity, each sitting on a stone, as Anderegg is fond of pointing out. In these pines the birds take great delight; Eing-ousels perch on the very top D 34 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. twigs, with food for their young in their bills, uttering their metallic alarm -notes, and watching us sus- piciously ; we found one nest in a stunted bush below, with young just ready to fly. 1 Eedpolls also build in these pines, and are at this time dancing about in families from tree to tree, twittering merrily. All that I have seen of recent years have been of the " mealy " form, as it is called ; they were somewhat larger than our English Lesser Eedpoll, and some of them had heads and breasts of the most brilliant carmine. But I still hold that a specimen which Anderegg shot here in 1885 was a genuine bird of the smaller race ; it was extremely small, and very dark in hue. On the top of these same trees the Alpine Pipit loves to perch, and thence to soar into the air and sing. It is generally the first bird we hear on our arrival, and very welcome the song always is ; for it tells you at once that you are on the real " alps," in pure, cool air, within reach of snow. You rarely or never hear him until you have mounted above all dense woods and heavy grass, into the shortest and sweetest of herbage, in which he loves to place his nest. When last year we were scrambling at some height above the alp, my friend Mr. Playne came 1 The Ring-ousels here, as Mr. Aplin pointed out to me, are of the alpine race, with something more of white on the wing than the common form. See Mr. H. Saunders' Manual of British Birds, P. 16, and Mr. Seebohm in Ibis, vol. vi. 309, ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 3 5 upon this nest, on a steep bit of grassy ground, con- taining five eggs speckled with greenish brown. This bird is perhaps the handsomest of all the Pipits, and as he has been found some four or five times in England, he is a bird worth knowing, even if you cannot follow him to his native haunts. He has a distinct light stripe over the eye ; his upper parts are gray, with a slight bluish tinge ; his throat and breast are rufous, his belly white, and his legs black, or nearly so. The wing coverts are brown, and these and the secondaries have whitish edges which show in two bars on the folded wing ; and the outer feathers of the tail have the white which is charac- teristic of almost all the Pipits and Wagtails. 1 The Black Eedstart is here, as everywhere else in Switzerland, at all heights up to the snow. I found a nest here, on a beam beneath the roof of a hay- barn a large, ungainly structure, as all nests are apt to be when built in such positions. Another nest, which was evidently in a hole in some big boulder, I utterly failed to find, in spite of careful watching ; the old cock bird was far too wary for me. I call him old because he had a head and nape so very gray that in some lights it seemed almost white ; and 1 This description, which tallies well enough with that of Mr. H. Saunclers in his Manual of British Birds (where this bird is called the Water Pipit), is taken from notes made in 1885 of a bird which Anderegg shot on this alp. 36 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. it was really this, rather than the chance of finding his nest, which caused me to give him such close attention. This must, I think, be a sign of age, though I have not seen it alluded to in books; I have noticed it once or twice in other individuals, but never so distinctly as in this one. This bird had also another peculiarity : he had invented a variation on the regular song of his species, consisting of two introductory notes, which even Anderegg was sure he had never heard before. There is a ridge of grassy limestone rock border- ing the alp to the east, which gives one a splendid position for scanning the tops of the pine-trees in the valley below. Citril Finches and Crossbills will sometimes show themselves here, and you can hardly ever fail to see a Nutcracker. This is a very rare bird at home, but you soon meet with him in Conti- nental pine-woods. He is not unlike a large Starling, and does indeed belong to the family of the Crows a relationship betrayed by his odd, uncanny ways. I have seen him sitting on the top of a pine, croaking like a small Eaven, and looking quite fiendishly know- ing. Mr. Howard Saunders noted the same charac- teristic in him, and while watching one disposing of nuts in the autumn, was irresistibly reminded of Punch dealing with his enemies in the show. 1 He descends in the autumn from the pines to the hazels, 1 Ibis, 1891, p. 174. ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 37 and enjoys his change of diet. I have often found old split nutshells in these lower grounds, which were the results of his feasting, among others which had been opened by squirrels these with a small hole drilled at one end. A Nutcracker's nest, I need hardly say, I have never yet found ; I cannot search the pine- woods in March, and if I could, I might well search in vain. It is only of recent years that the nest has been discovered at all ; and the mystery which used to enwrap it is prettily illustrated by an old Swiss myth which told of a priceless jewel to be found in it. This jewel would make the finder rich and happy for life, but neither nest nor jewel had been found in the Oberland when the story was told me. Before we stray further from the alp, let us return and see what other treasure it can produce for us. One evening we had for dinner some strange-looking fish from the lake, called by the natives Trlischen, with very big heads and long eel-like tails. They lie among stones by the edge of the lake, where you have first to stir them up with a long pole, then dangle a worm before them, and they will immediately take it, most eagerly at nightfall. We were puzzled by this fish, though very glad to eat him ; and my friend Aplin, after triumphantly catching one, bottled him in spirits and took him home to England. He turned out, however, to be nothing wonderful the 3 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. Burbolt, a British species, but restricted to a few of our rivers. What is interesting about him on the Engstlen Alp is that he must pass the greater part of the year under a roof of thick ice with deep snow above it ; and I presume that he buries himself in the mud and lies torpid. There is another animal, very plentiful on this alp, which also sleeps under snow all the winter. I have never seen Marmots so close and so well as here in June ; few visitors have been about, and the creatures have almost forgotten to be wary. Early one morning they were scampering all round us as we walked up to the Joch, looking much like long- haired dark-brown Scotch terriers ; in fear, I think, rather than in play, for we smelt foxes strongly, and found their tracks on the snow. The Marmot is a perfectly helpless creature ; every time he comes out of his hole he is in danger, and he knows it. When Eagles were commoner than they are now he ran risk from these, but foxes and stoats remain to per- secute him. He goes rarely far from home, except perhaps early in the morning, and when he wishes to enjoy the sun, squats down on the grass by the side of his burrow, or on the top of the little natural rise under which it is often excavated. There he makes a form like a hare's, which is often slabbed down quite smooth by his weight and shaggy hair. The instant any danger threatens a strange sound ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 39 or moving shadow he sits up with his paws in front of him, whistles loudly, and bolts into his hole. The whistle is astonishingly loud and shrill ; even with my dull ears I could hear it half a mile away. How it is produced I know not ; one book tells me that it is done by means of the two long incisor teeth, but of this I cannot be sure. Chamois are not yet wholly extinct in this dis- trict ; in 1891 we saw one for a moment, and I have frequently found their tracks in the snow, showing well the animal's strongly divided hoof. They may no longer be shot in this canton of Bern, and it may be hoped that they are getting more plentiful again. Among other vertebrate animals, vipers are here (though I have seen but one), and stoats, and alpine newts, and the curious black lizard-like salamander (Salamandra atra). These salamanders came out in great numbers at the close of a warm rainy day, and waddled clumsily about, tumbling down from the puny eminences they tried to climb, and trying to look like some inanimate object when stirred up with an alpenstock. But to return to birds, let me tell of the most enchanting nest that I have ever seen, the discovery of which was due to my old friend the landlord's son ; we were allowed to see it as being rational and privileged persons. I had long suspected that Teals visit this alp, but had never been able to prove it. 4O Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. Here, however, was a Teal's nest, hidden in a clump of alpine roses, through which you looked into a warm cradle of the duck's own feathers, containing seven beautiful eggs. A few yards off was a tiny pool, in which perhaps the young Teals were to have their first lesson in swimming. Other interesting nests are to be found by those who, like my friend Mr. Playne, are able to climb in search of them, among the steep slopes and rocks which lead from the alp to the Joch pass, and in a stony hollow called the Schafthal lying between that well-known path and the craggy fortress of the Schafberg. On these steep slopes the Alpine Accentor is always to be found ; you may catch his sweet warble as you walk up towards the Joch, or see him perched after his wont on the edge of some little precipice. He will leave this, and flutter about for a moment singing, while you watch ; or it may be that you will see a pair courting and pursuing each other, for at this height they are late in breeding. The bird may easily enough be missed in one of those rapid walks that Englishmen think necessary in the Alps ; so too may that exquisite Narcissus of purest white which I found on the rocks while searching for the nest. But one clear leisurely June morning will not fail to reveal both bird and flower. I have a strong conviction that this Alpine Accentor, the nearest and almost the only European ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 41 relation of our common little Hedge-sparrow, will some day be discovered breeding among the hills of our own island. It has indeed been very rarely met with there at any season, but its sombre dress and retiring habits may easily cause it to be over- looked. If any reader, scrambling on some steep hillside, should see a bird a little larger than a sparrow which shows chestnut on the flanks and a slight double -bar of white on the wing, let him watch it very closely; and if it should presently perch on the very edge of a rock, and show him a throat speckled with black and white, he may make a good guess that he has the Alpine Accentor before him. For his benefit too I will transcribe an account of the nest found by my companion on the second day of search on the Engstlen Alp. "One morning I clambered up the steep grass slopes to try and find a nest of the Alpine Accentor. Before I had gone very far I found a pair of these birds carrying food, and after a good deal of watch- ing succeeded in finding the nest. The cock and hen were so much alike that I could not see any difference; they moved about slowly, flicking their wings in a restless way, and after I had been watch- ing them some time, one flew away, and the other deliberately ate all the food it was carrying. In a short time, however, one returned, and soon went to feed the young. The nest was well concealed under 42 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. a rock which projected from a very steep bank and was covered with grass. Some of this grass hung down in front and formed a screen. It was sub- stantially made of short bits of dry grass and moss, and contained only a few feathers. There were four young, whose feathers were just beginning to grow ; when they opened their mouths, crying for food, I was able to see that there were two black spots at the back of their tongues." 1 As you lie up here among the flowers, watching the Accentor or listening to his pleasant song, a distant cawing may be heard far up on the pre- cipitous rocks. Cawing I must call it for want of a better word, but it is more like the voice of a Jack- daw than that of a Kook, and reminds me for a moment of the thousand daws of the chalk cliffs in Dorset. Then you will see, far up in the blue above the rocks, one or two black specks ; then half a dozen, then twenty ; and meanwhile the foremost are descending and nearing you, sailing with a flight hardly less graceful than a gull's, until they alight by the side of some great patch of melting snow, and probe the watery edges with their bright yellow bills. In such places there are insects in abundance, and such as will be good food for the young Choughs up yonder ; for some thousand feet higher, on the precipices at the end of the Schafthal, Mr. Playne 1 Zoologist, August 1893. ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 43 discovered their nesting-place, and saw young birds in immature plumage, with the bill black instead of yellow, and black feet instead of red. They are nearly always to be found here, appearing suddenly as I have described ; and they are so tame that, if you lie still, and if no tourist happens just then to be descending from the Joch, you may have forty or fifty walking or hovering about you. We are apt to associate the huge mountain- walls of Switzerland with birds that are themselves huge, with the Lammergeier, the Golden Eagle, and the larger Hawks. But, however it may have been in the past, these mighty robbers are not now the characteristic birds of the highest alps ; a few Buzzards and Kestrels, with here and there a Eaven, are all that as a rule the climber will meet with in a day's work. The typical bird of the peaks and glaciers is undoubtedly the Alpine Chough. He is the weather-prophet of the hunter in winter and of the guide in summer ; he is thought by some guides to be a bird of ill omen : he is apt to come upon you suddenly when you are in difficulties on some stone-swept couloir or brittle arete}- He may be with you on the highest peaks on the summit of Monte Eosa or the Finsteraarhorn. He may make a meal to-morrow on the relics of the supper you 1 My informant is the Rev. W. A. B. Coolidge, Secretary of the Alpine Club. 44 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. have been having at the club-hut, for like the Rook he is omnivorous, and needs be so to pick up a living in these wilds. He will eat snails, insects, and such small fry, when he has nothing better ; but, like the rest of his race, he is ready to feast on the carcase of some creature that the hunter has wounded and lost, and to fight for his share of it with his sharp yellow bill It may be that now and then he falls a victim to some bird of prey ; but in a multitude there is safety, and as I have seen him teasing a Kestrel just as the Eooks will do at home, I think it not unlikely that he may be able to defeat the attacks of much more formidable enemies. We shall leave the Choughs behind us as we descend from the snowy heights of the Joch ; we shall leave too the Ptarmigan and the Snow Finches, the two other species which are to be found only where snow is still lying or where it has but just melted. As we descend towards Engelberg we may again hear the Accentor and the Alpine Pipit ; then on the Pfaffenwand the bright voice of the Chiffchaff will be almost sure to tell us that we are nearing the woodland, and a little farther the Tree-pipit will greet our return to his own country, and the ubi- quitous Chaffinch, and many another. We are again in the regions of civilised bird-life ; what we see here we have seen before, and our ten days' work is done. An Alpine Chough down here would be a lost bird : ii To the Engstlen Alp once more 45 " Non altrimenti stupido si turba Lo montanaro, e rimirando ammuta, Quando rozzo e salvatico s'inurba." But the recollection of the montanari will live with us through the winter, and another June may show, if all be well, that the Engstlen Alp has something yet to teach us. CHAPTEE III AMONG THE BIRDS IN WALES IN the flat meadows of the midlands, with their deep alluvial soil, there is a certain lush richness of vegetation in June which makes the air heavy and languid. Unless the weather chances to be un- usually dry and bright, as it was in the June of last year, you cannot push through even a few yards of that dense herbage without feeling the moisture that lurks in the depths of it; the same moisture that becomes visible, when the sun goes down, in a white film of vapour which rises ghost-like in the dusk, and covers the meadow like a sheet, ending exactly where the hedge divides the upward-sloping pasture -field from the growing hay of the flat ground. It is at this time, before the hay is cut and the damp of the grass-roots is exposed and dried, at the very time when the flowers are most brilliant, and the gently-flowing water of our streams lingers lazily about the yellow flags and blue geraniums that CHAP, in Among the Birds in Wales 47 fringe the banks it is in the very height of the glory of midland verdure that I always feel a strong desire after light air and short grass. To mount to some height overlooking the plain, where in an old quarry the rock has been overgrown with thyme, or where on the broad strips of grass that border the road some remnants are still left of the old flora of the down-land, is to me at this time always a delight and a relief. Should there chance to be a corner where a few tufts of heather still linger among the furze-bushes, and where perhaps a little copse of pines varies the almost wearisome landscape of hedgerow elms and growing crops, then it is pleasant to lie for a while and listen to the Linnets or watch the handsome Stone-chat, picturing to oneself the time when half England was like this little nook, and when no one delighted in his wealth of wilder- ness as I do in this scanty remnant. But for those who can get a holiday in June it is possible to go farther away from heavy air and sleepy days than to the top of the neighbouring hills. In June the Alps are clothed in their wealth of flowers, and every breath of air is laden, not with rich sweet odours, but with dry, invigorating, aromatic deliciousness ; and many a time have I made my pilgrimage thither, to find the short grass I long for, still uneaten by the cows, and gay with a thousand blooms. Quite as enjoyable, and less far to seek, is 48 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. the still shorter grass of the chalk downs of southern England, those " Eusset lawns and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray." For there the light air comes from the sea ; though not iced, it is fresh with the salt water ; and as it breathes through the long bents and gathers the fragrance of the thyme, it dries up every tiny drop of moisture that has not already sunk into the porous soil, and gives you free leave to throw your- self without a thought of consequences on the grass, within an hour or two after a scudding shower has refreshed the thirsty down. One languid June, when duties came to an end at Oxford, it so happened that I could not seek the light air and short grass I longed for, either in the Alps or on the downs; and it was only an accident that took me for three or four days to a hospitable house in the Welsh hills, where I found all I needed. It was a district offering little of the "striking scenery " which attracts the tourist, and he is almost unknown in those parts ; there is in fact no ac- commodation for him. During a six weeks' stay in the wildest part of these hills some twenty years ago, working hard and trying to beguile unwilling trout, I saw but one pair of tourists. You may walk for miles over high wet moorland and never in Among the Birds in Wales 49 strike a track ; you may very easily lose yourself and follow down some brook which, with a gradual curve, will take you in the opposite direction to the point you wish to make for. And if rain and mist come on, as they did one summer evening years ago, when I was crossing from valley to valley by an ill-defined track, you may find a pocket compass a deliverance from a very comfortless night. It was nearly twenty years since I had been in these hills, and they, or rather I should say, all the details of them, were as good as new to me. I noticed with curiosity how these details gradually came back 'to me as things known in a previous state of existence, bringing the old associations back with them, so that I lived in a fresh undergraduatehood once more. Again and again their original writing on my mind had been written over, in other regions and other climates, and yet by some mysterious process it was brought to light, and the palimpsest made intelligible. In ascending one hill through a wood, I could not be sure that I was on the old familiar path till certain mossy rocks, jutting out into the path under the ash- trees, came home to me like old friends not suddenly, but with a growing consciousness of certainty that became firmer every minute. I sat down a while by those old rocks to let them have their way with me. In those days I knew nothing of birds ; I was far E 5 o Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. too much engrossed in Aristotle and fishing to find room for natural history. Now, wherever I go, I find something new to learn, for birds are everywhere ; and in this very spot I had a note to make that was of great interest to me. In the Alps I have noticed that the song of the Tree-pipit is heard in all the lower timbered pastures up to the point at which the pines come to an end, and the real alps begin. To that point you must ascend if you would hear the true Alpine Pipit, which there takes the place of the other, singing perhaps a more monotonous song but one quite as blithe and cheering, as it hovers in the air out of sight, then slowly nears you, to drop on to a boulder or a tuft of alpine rhododendron. During my short climb up the Welsh hill-side I had heard the Tree-pipit continually, and when I reached the margin of the wood and came out on those delicious gentler slopes, where only a tree here and there breaks the welcome sky-line, the same bird was still singing vigorously ; but as soon as I had left these straggling trees behind me, and was fairly out on the open moorland of sweet short grass and thick dry ling, then I was saluted by the voice, not of the alpine bird, but of our own English Meadow-pipit, which descends in autumn, like its alpine cousin, to lower feeding grounds, and is known in fact to all of us, at all seasons, as the Titlark. For a moment I was fairly carried off to those exquisite alps above in Among the Birds in Wales 5 r Engelberg, with which I especially associate the alpine bird ; for the songs of the two are much alike, though the foreigner is bolder and stronger in his flight, and louder and more continuous in his strain. He and his song are in keeping with the huge reach of the rocks and peaks around him ; the height and range of his flight are great, and you often search for him in vain, as the bell-like notes come now from this side, now from that, or lose him, after once catching sight of him against the sky, as he descends to the ground in the shadow of some dark precipice. But the English bird soon catches your eye, and hovers near you if you are likely to approach its nest; no mystery attends it, no great mountain walls encompass it, nor does it mount far away in air and " despise the earth," like the Skylark that was singing there too, away from all human cultivation, a tiny speck against the light driving clouds. There is a valley in this district, stretching far away into the wildest moorland, of which the alpine character is quite unmistakable. The hills rise steeply from the swiftly -flowing river, and are in many places clothed with dense plantations of pine and larch ; above these again you come out on yet steeper slopes of grass and fern, with gray silurian rock jutting out in regular lines, or sometimes form- ing precipices intersected by damp mossy gullies, 5 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. difficult indeed to climb, but leading to that in- vigorating level moorland where the Pipits have their summer home. On such a craggy edge a friend of mine, returning last Whitsuntide from a ramble through drizzling Welsh rain, came suddenly upon an Alpine Accentor. He had known the bird in Switzerland, and his account of it leaves no doubt in my mind as to the identification. It was sitting in dumpy fashion on the edge of a rock, as this Accentor loves to sit, and the chestnut of its flanks and the double whitish stripe on the wing were distinctly visible to the astonished stranger. Four weeks later, inspired by a faint hope of finding this bird breeding for the first time in our island, Mr. Aplin and I made a rapid journey to the same district, and were guided to the identical spot by the most explicit directions from our friend. For two mornings we scrambled about those rocky slopes, and noted how singularly they resembled the Accentor's haunts on the Joch pass ; but our search was all in vain. This bird alone was wanting to complete the illusion that we were in the Alps. The Eing-ousel was nesting not far off, and we could now and then hear his metallic alarm -note from some stunted bush among the crags. Here too was of course the Wheatear, singing that delicate warble which is so grateful to the ear of the dweller in midland plains ; and here too were a few pairs of in Among the Birds in Wales 53 Eedstarts, reminding us of those darker cousins of theirs which welcome us to the highest alpine pastures. What Englishman would naturally think of our little Eedstart as a bird of the mountains? We associate him in Oxfordshire, where he abounds in ever-increasing numbers, with the thick hedgerow, the pollards by the lazy stream, the old wall in the garden, the chequered shade of the orchard. Yet his tastes seem to be almost as cosmopolitan as those of his continental cousin, modified, I should perhaps add, with some slight tincture of caprice. It is most strange that in the south-east of England he should be comparatively uncommon. Ten days of constant walking in Kent showed me hardly a single pair, and confirmed all that had been told me by residents in that county and Sussex. Those enthusiasts who, loving the birds more than justice or knowledge, would ascribe the scanty numbers of some species in those counties to the cruelty of mankind, will be utterly unable to convince me of this in the case of the Eedstart. It cannot be truly said that this bird is persecuted anywhere; and if we are to try and explain why it should prefer the west to the east, I should be inclined to guess that the waterless downs and heaths do not suit its needs so well as damp river -valleys and moist mountain sides. The Eedstart loves the pollard willows that line our 5 4 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. midland streams, and all places where good nesting- holes, and abundant insect food, and plentiful water can be found; and no one who is used to see him daily and hourly in such places would expect to find him in equal plenty in a drier climate. But to return to the Welsh hills. Here in June it is still spring ; such hedges as there are here are still white with hawthorn blossom, and the wild roses have hardly begun to bloom. The grass even here in the valley is short enough for me : a short, thick undergrowth of flowers, with enough of taller grasses to suggest that it is meant for hay. But about these fields, and round the fine solid new church, which stands at the junction of two moun- tain streams, the Sand-martins are busy, reminding me of the richer water-meadows I have left behind me in England. The Sand-martins took me by surprise : in old days I never noticed them, and never learnt to associate them with water that talks as it runs. About Oxford, where they are perhaps in greater numbers than in any other haunt of mine, their conversation is unbroken by the noise of water ; and in the silence of a still summer evening it forces itself on your attention, for there is nothing but your own thoughts to rival it. Here, as I stood in the churchyard, with the streams and the Sand-martins chatting all around me, there seemed to be much more life and stir than by the silent Thames in the in Among the Birds in Wales 55 heavy English air. Probably this was the last colony on this side of the mountain range which separated me from the Irish Sea : the last ripple of the wave of Sand-martins which comes surging in April up the larger rivers, breaking into lesser parties, we may suppose, to seek old haunts up the smaller streams, and so touching with one of its last laps this far- away mountain hamlet. Inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos ! l In my last chapter I said that in the Alps we hardly see so many birds of prey as we should expect in such a region ; and in this one respect at least the Welsh hills are the better hunting-ground. I write, indeed, with hesitation on such a subject, and name no names of hill or valley ; for so long as the fury of the egg-collector is unabated, so long will all birds of prey be in danger in danger far greater than that to which they expose themselves by their own cruelties. The young lambs may be harried every spring, and the game in the larch covers may attract the enemy, but still that enemy survives all vengeance of the angry farmer and disgusted sports- 1 Yet some at least of these birds arrive in "Wales very early. They were seen this year both in Glamorganshire and Pembroke- shire during the first week of April ; while at Oxford none were seen till toward the end of the month. These early arrivals probably come from the Continent by way of Devon : cf. Mr. Murray Mathew's Birds of Devon, p. 59. The Sand-martin's lines of migration need further investigation. 5 6 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. man. I have known this district for thirty years, and as far as I can see the great birds are as abundant as ever ; but when once the egg-dealer has found them out (and that he has found them out here I know too well), it can only be a question of time. These hills are not such as afford them many nesting-places that are utterly inaccessible ; and when their strongholds have been stormed year by year for a while they will give up the game and die or depart. But as yet the process of extermination has not gone nearly as far as the lamentations of Mr. Hudson would lead us to suppose. 1 In 1869, when I spent some weeks in one of these valleys, the cry of the Buzzards was the daily accompaniment to our studies of Aristotle and Livy. In 1894, a few miles from the same spot, it was still possible to lie on the crest of a hill and watch two, three, or even four of these noble birds soaring overhead at the same time. Eavens I do not remember in the old days, but of ornithology I then knew nothing. In the spring of the present year they were numerous, and many a sickly lamb on the mountains had his young eyes hacked out by those terrible bills of theirs. 2 While 1 See his pamphlet issued by the Society for the Protection of Birds, entitled Lost British Birds ; the value of which I readily acknowledge, irritating as it is in some ways to those who have lived all their lives in England. 2 That this is often the case I was assured by the farmer with whom I lodged last spring in this district. in Among the Birds in Wales 57 scanning the unclouded blue for even grander birds than these, I once caught myself saying, as a black speck over the opposite hill began to near us, " It's only a Eaven ! " And this in spite of all the farmer's temptations to destroy this cruel enemy of his. The Eaven will not easily be extirpated ; there are still English counties as well as Welsh ones in which he may be hopefully looked for, and if the passion for private egg-collecting can be only kept within due bounds, there need be no fear that he will disappear from our British list. But what were those still grander birds for which we augurs were watching the heavens in the last days of March this year ? I have a record, in a diary kept among these hills in 1869, of the appearance of a Kite for two successive days; and since then, though always expected to die out, these com- paratively harmless hermits have contrived to main- tain themselves here, as the pages of the Zoologist will testify. This year, almost in the same spot where I first saw them a quarter of a century ago, I once more watched their magnificent flight with wondering eyes. Few Englishmen have had that experience, and some may care to read the note I made. " We soon saw a Kite above us, at first quite near ; the sun lit up the red colour of his back and tail, and (as he turned) the rusty feathers of his under parts. The wings were narrow, with the 5 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. primaries standing out distinct from each other like a Crow's ; the tail long, the ' fork ' most distinct as if a deep segment of a circle had been cut out of it. N was just saying that this might be the last survivor of the race, when a second bird appeared rising from the wood to our left, and then soared just over our heads, giving us a splendid view. The two then circled in a slow upward flight : the wings beaten eight to twelve times in succession, with a curving motion of the wing, then a graceful glide round half or more of the circle. At last they became mere specks in the blue, and we could hardly keep them in view even with a strong field-glass." These splendid birds were then engaged upon a nest in a place very far indeed from being inac- cessible. I need not say that we left that nest wholly undisturbed, and that we bound ourselves to betray the secret of the spot to no one. Yet when next I had news of the district the harpies had descended upon it : " Nee saevior ulla Pestis et ira deum Stygiis sese extulit undis." Whether they robbed the Kites' nest I know not, but they wrought other havoc. From what I saw two months later I am inclined to hope that the Kites retreated to a position from which even an egg-dealer would have found it hard to dislodge them, and that in Among the Birds in Wales 59 their life last breeding season may after all have been a happy one. But let me insist on it once more that, though they may escape the farmer and the sports- man, neither of whom is in those parts wantonly vindictive, they cannot long survive the greed of the trader in eggs ; and further, that the trader himself can only be suppressed by a rigid self-denying ordinance on the part of the private collector. 1 But we must leave the rocky summits of the hills, and descend, perhaps through very steep woodland, to the winding valley with its road and river. In some places the hills are clad almost to the very crown with trees ; and not only with pine or larch, but here and there with oaks of no great height, with a border of ashes or sycamores on their last gentler mossy slopes by the river. Beneath the trees is no great luxuriance of grass, for the brake-fern here has it all its own way, and covers the whole hill-side, except where an occasional bit of rock juts out, in the shelves and crannies of which a mossy turf is spread. Could any place be a more pleasant and beautiful home for wood-loving birds ? I have often noticed that a steep slope, where trees are not too closely packed for the sun to shine freely in among the shadows, is always a favourite haunt. Was there not, and is there not, the famous Hanger of Selborne, made memorable for ever to English bird-lovers ? Another 1 See Mr. Salter's note in the Zoologist for August 1893. 60 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. such steep wood in the chalk country has been admirably described by the late Mr. Jefferies in the Gamekeeper at Home. They are good for bird- observers as well as for birds, for there is no position so happy as one from which you can look down, un- observed, through a vista of trees, without wearying the eyes by a long, strained, upward search through tangled foliage. Taking up your position at some point where you can command as many trees as pos- sible, leaving the upper and denser foliage for the most part out of your thoughts, but keeping a keen eye on all barer boughs or leafless twigs for these are specially affected by some birds, and others too will come to them in the course of their wanderings, you may sit quietly down and wait, with binocular ready, and ear as keenly observant as your eye would be if it were watching your flies on the stream far below. In such moments the sharp look-out you have to keep will in no way hinder you from enjoy- ing the beauty of the interlacing oak-branches, or the gray tint which the lichen that everywhere clings to them gives to the whole woodland scene. The ear will probably be the first watchman to give the signal for a still closer attention. The voices of the ubiquitous Chaffinch and Willow-wren have not been enough to rouse it, for they are at hand everywhere, both in Wales and England. But now I hear the voice of a little bird that is not too in Among the Birds in Wales 61 common to be invariably attractive and interest- ing ; it is not unlike the winding -up of an old- fashioried watch or a musical box, if you imagine the key turned very slowly at first, then more and more quickly, until the position of the winder's hand compels him to rest for a moment and begin the operation afresh. Once more we are reminded of the Alps ; for this is the bird which is so nearly related to Bonelli's Warbler, and so like that little friend of mine in habits, appearance, and voice. A most curious voice is his, and though not strictly musical, very far from unpleasing to the ear; the silvery " shivering " quality of it which White noticed long ago has a way of craving your attention, and growing upon you as it comes nearer and nearer. Patience is necessary if we would see the bird fairly ; and the only way is to sit and wait till you have caught him, even but for an instant, with your unassisted eye, and marked the tree in which he is searching for food. He will not wander far, unless you pursue him ; the nest is in the fern not far away, and the persistence of his note makes it probable that his wife is still sitting on eggs, and that the duty of finding food for hungry young has not yet begun. Watch him till he comes near enough to show you how all a bird's mind is put into his song ; as he utters it his long, closed wiugs are slightly opened and shaken, and his bill opens wider and wider, 62 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. till the vibrating tongue is clearly visible as the head is held upwards to sustain the effort. Every now and then he will communicate with his wife by a signal she knows well : it is a series of long, pathetic notes, which can be heard at a long distance, and speak his tender love and appreciation of her labours. These notes are uttered for I have watched the bird at a distance of a few feet with the bill almost closed, and with no sign of effort ; they are rather an inward meditation than an outspoken call, in spite of their resonance. What you see when the Wood-wren has revealed himself is nothing but a little brown bird with a whitish-yellow throat and pure white breast and belly; the books indeed tell you that there is much yellow about it, but this you would readily discover only if you had it in your hand and could turn up the feathers. But if not conspicuous in his colouring, he is a model of perfect grace in shape and movement ; and if birds are to be studied, as indeed I hope they are, not merely as empty skins, but as living creatures with minds, hoping and fearing, rejoicing and sorrowing, here is one that I may well watch for half an hour, and feel as much indebted to the sight of his delicate form and harmonious motion as I should to the contemplation of the gracefullest of Greek vases or the purest melody of Mozart. There is one other bird which I should wish to in Among the Birds in Wales 63 notice before I leave these woods and close these notes for the present, which does not need to be watched for like the Wood-wren, but obtrudes himself upon your attention by his bright plumage, his comparatively loud note of warning, and his preference for the lower and barer boughs of the trees. It is not often that we of the midlands have the chance of seeing or hearing a Pied Flycatcher. When he does appear, he is only a passing visitor on his way to the hills, and I have never known him stay with us more than one day. Yet it is well to keep a look-out for him in the valleys of the Thames and its affluents during the latter half of April ; and his plumage is just then so brilliant that it cannot fail to catch the eye. The white of the breast is so pure that in the sunshine it will be distinctly visible at a great distance, and can be distinguished at once from the grayer tint of the same parts in the commoner species. I have on two or three occasions come upon a pair travelling together in Oxfordshire, or rather resting from their travel ; they perch on a railing and spend the day in catching flies with such an air of contentment and savoir faire that you are deluded into fancying that they are going to remain your guests ; but the next day you will look for them in vain. It would seem that the flat country is not to the mind of this bird, and he quickly leaves our gardens 64 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. and orchards to the Spotted Flycatchers who are following him from the Continent, and makes north and west for wooded hills and dales. And this is not because he is persecuted, or likely to be, for his nest is not easy to find, nor yet easy to plunder when found ; but simply because one of those predilections for which we can never entirely account urges him towards sunny timbered slopes .where the trees are old and offer him a choice of many a cavernous homestead. From the Lake Country we have ex- cellent accounts of him in the well-known books of the Eev. H. A. Macpherson ; but perhaps his favourite homes are the central hills of Wales. Even here, however, he is somewhat capricious ; while in Brecon- shire and Eadnorshire he is quite a common bird, I have never once found him in the Glamorganshire hills, which I have known almost all my life. On the Continent I have always seen him in just such places as he loves in Wales, among the larger timber of a Swiss mountain-side, or on the forest slopes of the Taunus range. 1 Just as the trout loves swiftly- running streams, or as the Wood-wren is sure to be heard where the oak is the prevailing tree, so there are certain spots which you instinctively feel that 1 Once or twice I have seen it in the garden of a hotel in Switzerland, and once nesting in a tree on the outskirts of Inter - laken. For the distribution of this bird in "Wales see Zoologist for November 1893. It is singular that we hear so little of it from the border counties. in Among the Birds in Wales 65 this bird ought to have chosen for his habitation, and if you are in the right district you may fairly lay a wager that he will be found there. Such a spot, on the edge of the beech forests of Wiesbaden, will always remain in very clear outline in my memory, for it was there I first heard the song of this bird. It is very seldom now that I hear a song that is quite new to me. If it were not that so many of our songsters sing all too short a time, and that when they tune up one by one for the orchestra of the spring season each instrument touches the ear with the fresh delight of recognition, I might feel as much at the end of my tether as the mountaineer who has no more peaks to climb. But this song was not only new, but wonderfully sweet and striking. "Something like a Kedstart's," say the books, and this is not untrue, so far as it represents the outward form, so to speak, of the song the quickness or shortness of notes, the rapid variations of pitch. But no one who has once accustomed his ear to the very peculiar timbre of the voice of either kind of Eedstart will mistake for it the song of the Pied Flycatcher. My notes, taken on the spot, and before I had seen any other description of it, recall the song to my memory the short notes at the beginning, the rather fragmentary and hesitating character of the strain, and the little coda or finish, which reminded me of the Chaffinch ; but all this will have no meaning to F 66 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. my readers. There is but one way of learning a bird's song, and that is by listening to it in solitude again and again, until you have associated it in your mind with the form and habits and haunts of the singer. The Pied Flycatcher may, under certain circum- stances, be a puzzling bird to the novice. An old male, in full plumage of black and white, is indeed unmistakable ; but the female, the young, and (as is now well known) some at least of the birds of a year old, have the back and head of a grayish brown. The pair which I watched at Wiesbaden were very much alike, and as they were flitting about the highest branches of an old gnarled oak, I had some trouble in identifying them even with the field -glass. I knew little of the species then, and the brown in both sexes puzzled me, the song puzzled me, and when the male showed his tail to me delightfully while clinging Swift-like to the mouth of the hole they were choosing for their nesting-place, the white of the two outer tail-feathers puzzled me no less. 1 Worst of all, the brown of the head was distinctly reddish, and it was not for some time that I dis- covered that this was caused by the sunlight falling on the bird and reflected through the ruddy young oak -leaves that brilliant April morning. Only the 1 For the brown of the back in breeding birds, cf. Macpherson's Birds of Cumberland, p. 36. in Among the Birds in Wales 67 manner of the birds and the peculiar pose of their heads kept me pretty steadily to the conviction that I had Flycatchers before me. A few years ago it was hardly known that this beautiful bird is so regular a visitor to many parts of Wales ; but recently some attention has been paid to Welsh birds, and good ornithologists are at work there. Much, however, remains to be done, and we can but hope that it will be done without letting in the harpies to spoil with their noisome feasts the secluded homes of the Pied Flycatcher and the Wood- lark. The Birds of Wales, when such a book is written, will greatly exceed in interest the monographs of the ornithology of single English counties, if only because Wales is a natural division of this island and not merely an artificial one. Such a work will have to be one of slow growth, and must be the result of organised combination and division of labour. But I should not be surprised, were I to live long enough to see it completed, to find that some remarkable discoveries had been made among those wilder hills which the tourist has not found out, and where the smaller birds are despised or overlooked by the sportsman. For myself, I confess that when I find myself among these hills the evil propensities of former days are apt to get the better of me, and by a deep dark pool, well ruffled by the mountain breeze, I 68 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP, in almost cease to hear the note of the Wood-wren coming towards me through the lichened oak-boughs, while I extract one little trout after another from the peaty water. I could almost wish that, like these Wood-wrens, the trout had a voice to express his hopes and fears ; if that were so, I think my fishing career would once more be a thing of the past. It may be that one reason at least why of all sports fishing is the only one that pleases me is because a fish is a silent animal. You haul him from his element he complains not but by gesture ; you put a speedy end to his existence by a sharp knock he leaves his life indignant but in silence. There is a certain tarn among these hills where the trout are said, when caught, to give vent to their indignation in inarticulate sounds ; but I have never fished in that pool, nor, if I found the story true, would I fish there a second time. CHAPTEE IV THE MAKSH WARBLER IN OXFORDSHIRE AND SWITZERLAND 1 EVERY one who is fond of reading books of travel in the tropics must know what it is to long for an hour or two of real life in a virgin forest, or in the boundless expanse of the pampas, or even in the depths of a mangrove swamp. We would willingly put up with mosquitoes and " piums " and poisonous ants, if we could but see that world for ourselves which Darwin and Bates and Wallace and Belt have made almost, but not quite, a reality for us. Charles Kingsley had this ambition all his life, and was able in the end to indulge it. His enthusiastic delight at what he saw in the West Indies made him even more than usually eloquent, and his chapter on the " High Woods " marks perhaps the highest point 1 A paper read to the Oxfordshire Natural History Society, November 1893. /O Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. which a traveller's descriptive power can reach. Let me quote a few words : " For the first moment the forest seems more open than an English wood. But try to walk through it, and ten steps undeceive you. You look up and around; and then you find that the air is full of wires, that you are hung up in a network of fine branches belonging to half-a-dozen different sorts of young trees, and intertwined with as many different species of slender creepers. You thought at your first glance among the tree-stems that you were looking through open air ; you find that you are looking through a labyrinth of wire rigging, and must use the cutlass right and left at every five steps." And so on for whole pages of masterly description, dictated by an almost childlike astonishment at find- ing the expectations of a lifetime so entirely outdone .by the reality. Few of us can look forward to the enjoyment of these uncomfortable delights, except in reading and re-reading the old familiar books. Yet I think that these last two summers I have tasted them for a few short hours ; a very faint flavour of them it was a bare suspicion of distant resemblance ; and this was in England, and within half a mile of my own home in this county. If you would gain some dim notion of what tropical vegetation is, try a neglected iv The Marsh Warbler 7 1 osier-bed on a hot day in June. The willows must be nearly twice as tall as you are yourself, planted together in rows, with a drain or ditch between each row ; and they must be covered with a thick foliage of monotonous light green, just enough to let the hot sun through. These osiers should also be full of flies and midges, the one settling on your nose, and the other biting your ears, at every moment when you least desire such interruption. Their stems, for three or four feet or more, should be hidden in an undergrowth of long, dry, wiry grass, so thick that it is hard to push through it, with heavily -odorous meadowsweet just coming into bloom, and with that peculiar zigzag -growing tangle of a plant which leaves its seed-vessels sticking on you whenever you touch it. The ditches between each row should be just wet enough with recent showers to give your feet a cold bath if you plunge into them unawares ; and they should be just so carefully hidden by the long dense grass as to lead you to forget again and again that there is water beneath it. Choose an osier bed of this pattern, and spend an hour or two in it, with some eager purpose in your mind which will not let you leave it, and you may at last feel that you know something of what a mangrove swamp is like, or what it is to try and force your way through the tangle of an American forest. But what led me to expose myself to these petty 7 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. discomforts ? I had no wish to prowl about in this osier-bed merely to see what it was like ; and in- deed it was not so very easy to get into, for it was fenced with barbed wire on two sides, and on the other the only entrance was through a thick over- grown hedge, with a wet ditch on the further side. The fact was that I went to see and hear a certain small brown bird, and, if possible, to find its nest ; and thereby hangs a somewhat lengthy tale, which must be told, if you have the patience for it, before I lead you into the labyrinthine recesses of the jungle. It is on the 18th of May 1888 that my tale begins a day when the academic precincts of Oxford were unusually quiet and deserted, owing to a cricket match with the Australians. I was entering the Botanic Garden that afternoon, when I heard in a bush, just outside the turnstile, the song of a Eeed Warbler. This was no new thing, for the bird is quite common all round Oxford in suitable places; but what struck me most was, first, that this was not a suitable place, and, secondly, that the song was peculiar for a Eeed Warbler. The bush was just inside a hedge of privet, and there was an apple-tree overhanging it : exactly opposite are the schools of the parish, outside which, at various times in the day, there is the usual shouting and screaming of boys and girls let loose. Now, our iv The Marsh Warbler 73 Keed Warblers, it is true, have long ago adapted themselves to circumstances, and often build, not in reeds, but in bushes, in privet, lilac, willow, etc. : using the pliable twigs exactly as they used to use the reeds, i.e. gathering them into the nest in order to secure it more strongly against wind and storm. There was no reason, then, why a Reed Warbler should not choose the privet hedge for an abode ; but for so retiring a bird to select a spot within a few paces of a school was surely singular. And then the song, which was almost incessant, was also loud, vigorous, and delightful : if it were really the song of a Eeed Warbler, the singer had a marvellous gift, far exceeding that of any individual of the species that I had ever yet heard. The Eeed Warbler's song is unusually quiet and sedate, and even monotonous ; but here was a bird of genius, who understood how to turn the ordinary song into a very brilliant and diversified performance. I saw the bird once or twice for a moment, and it appeared to me to be quite indistinguishable from the Eeed Warbler ; I doubt if it then occurred to me that it could be anything else. The next day it was gone: Next year (1889), on 8th May, I again heard this wonderful outpouring of song in the same place; and by this time it had occurred to me that the singer might be the rarer Marsh Warbler, which has only of late years been fully recognised as an English 74 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. bird. The books did not give me much hope of distinguishing the two by external appearance ; but they all agreed that the song of the Marsh Warbler is far finer, sweeter, and more varied than that of the Eeed Warbler. Now, this bird again sang with such force that even the gardeners in the Botanic Garden had been struck with it ; and I determined to do all I could to solve the mystery. I hid myself inside the privet hedge while the children were safe in school, and spent a long time in scrutinising the bird and his song, while the murmur of lessons went on outside, and walkers and talkers passed up and down within a yard or two, neither seeing me, nor noticing the song. I continued to pass stray half- hours here for a day or two, until again the bird departed ; not frightened, I think, by the silent human figure that kept lurking beneath the bush, but finding the place too lively at times for him to hear his own voice in comfort. The result of my perseverance was practically nil. I had never heard or seen an undoubted Marsh Warbler, and I could not have attested in a court of justice my conviction that this was a bird of that species. This is a misfortune which must often befall the ornithologist, who cannot seize on a bird as a botanist gathers a plant ; even if he has a gun in his hand he is probably most unwilling to use it, and in the public places of a town he fortunately iv The Marsh Warbler 75 cannot use it under any circumstances. He may feel as sure as he can be that he has seen something remarkable, yet he may very well fail to convince a truly discreet brother of the craft. Many a good record has doubtless been lost in this way, but, what is much more important, many a bad record has been set aside. In this case, however, I could not even feel any moral certainty ; to an inexperienced eye the two species are almost exactly alike, and I had yet to learn what it is that really separates them beyond a doubt. All this was very tantalising, but luckily for me there was a way out of the difficulty. In another month I should be set free from my Oxford work ; what pleasanter plan could I make for a holiday than to go and search for the real Marsh Warbler where I knew he was likely to be found? Could I but pay him a visit in his Continental haunts, I might be pretty sure in a day or two of fixing his identity in my mind beyond all doubt and dispute. I knew where to go; for Professor Fatio of Geneva had studied the bird in a certain Alpine valley which is evidently a favourite haunt of the species, and this valley I might easily reach before the nesting and singing came to an end. But first I determined to go to Meiringen in the Oberland, in order to pick up my faithful old friend Johann Anderegg, whose knowledge of Alpine birds had 76 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. been so often useful to me; and to Meiringen accordingly I went with all speed as soon as my duties came to an end. I did not need to go any further to find my bird. The very morning after I arrived there I was strolling along a path which runs between allotments towards the famous defile of the river Aar, when I heard a very sweet and varied song which instantly attracted my attention. I soon discovered the singer, perched on a tall pole which had once supported peas or beans : he was within about thirty yards of the river, and behind him was a hedge, behind that again a deep hollow filled with reeds and bushy undergrowth, then the embankment of the Aar, and finally that great glacier stream itself. To this promising spot I betook myself at once, in order to find out who was the singer of a song so new to me and at the same time so sweet. After spending some time here, I felt pretty sure that this was the bird I had come to seek, and I also felt sure that the bird of the Botanic Garden was not the same as this. The song of this little fellow was of an entirely different type ; instead of being a brilliant edition of the Reed Warbler's song, it never once reminded me of it. It was something quite new to me. I did not on that occasion hear the full performance, nor did I then discover the extraordinary power of mockery which the bird possesses ; but within a day or two I became aware IV The Marsh Warbler 77 of this, and have something to say of it later on. For the present I will only add that not only the outward appearance of the bird, but more especially his attitude in singing, his sprightly and restless habit, and above all the unique character of his infinitely varied song, in all of which characteristics he agreed with all the descriptions of the Marsh Warbler I had ever read, convinced me that I had here the bird I was looking for, and so indeed it turned out. I did not find his nest that year, which would have made certainty doubly certain ; but I returned to England knowing that I could never again have any real doubt about the essential difference between Reed Warbler and Marsh Warbler, and pretty confident that I should be able to tell them apart in future, if at any rate they would but oblige me with the sound of their voices. But two years were to pass before I was to see my little friend again. That wonderful singer never came again to the Botanic Garden ; and if he was really a Marsh Warbler with an eccentric song, his identity can never be proved. It was not till the summer of 1891 that I was again able to visit the Alps in the breeding season ; but when that pleasant opportunity at last arrived, it brought with it a complete solution of all my difficulties. Luckily I had engaged as my travelling companion my friend Mr. 0. V. Aplin, who had recently inserted 7 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. in his Birds of Oxfordshire a note of mine about the bird of the Botanic Garden. I was to find out the localities in which we were likely to come upon new or interesting birds, and my friend was to bring his accurate scholarship to bear upon them when found. I use this word scholarship intentionally, for there is no other that so exactly expresses that combina- tion of knowledge and observation, of observation strengthened and controlled by knowledge, and of knowledge based on observation and only aided by books, which is characteristic of every true natu- ralist, as of every true scholar. There are many inaccurate naturalists, as there are many inaccurate scholars; and as I know myself to be by nature inexact, I am most unwilling to accept the evidence of my own senses without some confirmation from those of a better scholar. On the second day after we reached Switzerland we spent two or three hours at Interlaken, where we found much to interest us. At the end of the long street which leads towards the Lake of Brienz we passed out into a spongy -looking and reedy tract, lying between the river Aar and some cultivated ground, just in the same position as the haunt of the Marsh Warbler at Meiringen. Here I proposed that we should follow a footpath which ran along the river-side, and seemed likely to lead us to some bits of scrub and wild ground which we could see iv The Marsh Warbler 79 about a quarter of a mile ahead. This scrub turned out to consist of some kind of low-growing willow, with ditches and hollows overgrown with long grass and meadowsweet. My friend plunged into it, while I went on a little further. Almost directly he called me back, and by the waving of his umbrella I saw that he had made some discovery. It was indeed a discovery ; it was the nest of a Marsh Warbler. There was the nest, and there too was the bird, which continued to creep about the neighbourhood of the nest for some minutes after we had disturbed her. There were four eggs in the nest, the beauty of which will always dwell in my memory. They were of the same type as the Eeed Warbler's, but instead of being densely covered with greenish spots, their ground colour was greenish white, with many largish dull purple blotches, gathered chiefly at the thicker end. The nest too was specifically distinct from that of our familiar Oxford bird ; it was of a slighter make, and not so deep, but the stalks of the meadowsweet had been drawn into its structure, much as the reeds or the shoots of privet or lilac are used in the nest of the Eeed Warbler. It is worth noting that the few nests of this species which have been so far found in England have been usually suspended in meadow- sweet ; and also that they have never, so far as I know, been found immediately over water, but at a little distance from it, and not very far from culti- 8o Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. vated ground. We took one egg only, and after some further search returned to the village, and went on our way to Meiringen, where we were to sleep that night. Next morning I went to the spot where I had first heard my bird two years before. There is always a pleasing excitement in revisiting such a spot, just as there is when you call unexpected at the house of an old friend and wonder whether you will find him at home. Has he left the old place, or will he start up from his chair to welcome you with that brightness of the eye which sudden and genuine pleasure always charms into being ? Ornithologists know how home- loving the birds are, and especially the various little "Warblers" as we call them; rarely do they disappoint us year after year, when we wait on them in their accustomed haunts as May comes round. It matters little whether they are the same individuals who entertained us before; at any rate, like trout, the little things take care that some one shall be there to welcome us, and the "living" in the reed-bed or willow is seldom vacant long. My old friend of the allotments by the Aar was at home that morning (19th June), and treated me to a very delicious and amusing concert, missed unluckily by my companion, who had been unwell and unable to join me. " I am now writing," says my diary of that day, " in a cool spot between the allotments and IV The Marsh Warbler 8 1 the Aar, and listening to the Marsh Warbler, whose song is as wonderful as ever. Sometimes a grating outburst like that of a Sedge Warbler ; sometimes a long-drawn sweet note like a Nightingale's. Then I have within the last few minutes certainly heard the Chaffinch imitated, and even the Nuthatch's metallic note. But a low pleasing soliloquy also goes on at intervals. Ah ! there is the Great Tit ; now the White Wagtail, and I am beginning to get bewildered. This bird creeps about a good deal in the bushes, but now and then appears on a topmost shoot, and sits there singing with his bill wide open, and a red -yellow ' gape ' showing very plainly. Now and then he flies into the tree over my head, ah ! there is the call of the Eedstart, and surely this is the Skylark's song ; and there is the Chaffinch again, if ever I heard a Chaffinch." When Aplin was able to bestir himself we strolled again to this spot : but the bird was silent, or almost so. And for those who may seek his acquaintance it may be as well to say here that the Marsh Warbler is essentially a morning singer. I do not say that under favourable conditions he will not sing all day long, like the Nightingale, nor do I mean to exclude the possibility of his singing at night. But within my own experience, both in England and abroad, he has always been at his best from six till ten in the morning. It is then that he will take his post on G 82 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. some coign of vantage, and indulge in his faculty of mimicry, meditating his song, as it were, " What shall I try next ? " Later in the day he seems more restless, and flies further afield ; while in the earlier hours he sings as a rule so close to the nest that it is then often quite easy to find. And thus indeed it was that a few days later (27th June) we found a beautiful nest in a place which I would recommend to every one who would make acquaintance with this delightful bird. We had crossed the mountains from Meiringen to Engelberg, spending on our way three most profitable days at the Engstlen Alp, the favourite summer home of many interesting species ; and from Engelberg we descended to the Lake of Lucerne at Stanzstadt, which stands on that arm of the lake from which Pilatus rises precipitously. Just outside this village is a long tract of reedy ground, such as in the north of England they would call a moss, quaking somewhat as you walk on it, but really quite safe and dry, except at the margin of the lake, where it imper- ceptibly slips into shallow water. This tract shows here and there large bunches of meadowsweet and other tall plants, and among these you will never fail in June to hear the bird you look for. In such a little thicket of meadowsweet, at about eight o'clock in the morning, we that day heard a splendid singer ; and after listening for a few minutes while he sang iv The Marsh Warbler 83 away a dozen yards from the cart-track on which we stood, I made my way through the undergrowth, and came upon the nest just where the bird had been singing. It was of grass, with a very few hairs in the lining, and contained two eggs somewhat whiter in tone than those we found at Interlaken, and spotted only at the thicker end. We found no other nests that day, but heard much singing; and we noted that, in spite of the many imitations in which the bird indulges, there is always a very sweet silvery individuality about the song, which makes it quite unmistakable, and should distinguish it for every reasonably acute ear from the Eeed Warbler's quiet soliloquy, or the rattling enthusiasm of the Sedge Warbler. The former of these two cousins may be heard sometimes in this same moss, but always among the tall reeds by the water : the latter, so far as I know, is a stranger to these parts, nor do I remember ever to have heard or seen it alive in Switzerland. The individuality of the Marsh Warbler's strain must have impressed itself very keenly on my memory. And it was fortunate that this was so, for in spite of minute differences of colouring between this bird and the Eeed Warbler, of which I shall have a word to say presently, the two are in truth so much alike that if they were silent birds it would be as hard to distinguish them when alive and free 84 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. as it is when they are presented to you in the miser- able condition of " skins." Nearly a year after we had left Switzerland, after the gloomiest of winters, made doubly triste by the last epidemic of influenza, my ears were once more gladdened by the strain I had learnt to love, and this in England, and within ten minutes' walk of my own house in Oxfordshire. To this snug corner of the midlands, and to that osier-bed whose delights I began by recording, I must now ask you once more to accom- pany me. I was returning from a stroll on Whitsunday, 5th June 1892, and was just turning the corner of this overgrown wilderness of willows, when I was sud- denly pulled up by a fragment of song, undecided, imperfect, yet of so sweet and silvery a tone that neither Eeed nor Sedge Warbler could have uttered it. Such moments are never to be forgotten by those who have ever felt the spell of a wild bird's voice. There is an inward conviction in the hearer's mind that overpowers all transient troubles, and banishes utterly all thoughts of work and books ; and with it there is the not unpleasing phantom of a doubt a piquant spice of uncertainty not so much about your own conclusion as to the bird's identity, but as to the chance of getting others to accept it. And on this occasion, wait as long as I would, I could obtain no glimpse of the singer ; nor was he inclined iv The Marsh Warbler 85 to sing a full and utterly unmistakable melody, for the day was well advanced. That night I had to leave for Oxford, and it was not till the following Thursday that I could leave my duties there for a few hours, and attempt to put the evidence of my ears to the test. On that day I penetrated alone into the osiers at 8 A.M. The morning was very hot, and I soon began to find the conditions of my search uncomfortably tropical, for not a breath of air could reach me, and this particular spot happens to be one of the warmest in the parish. But all such discomforts cease to tease the instant the mind has something to work on ; and in a very few minutes I knew that my con- viction of last Sunday was no delusion. At intervals during two hours I listened to as wonderful a display of mimicry as I had heard at Meiringen or Stanz- stadt. This bird completely deceived me once with the song of the Tree-pipit, and constantly fell to mimicking the Lark, the Swallow, and others ; and though I could only get a momentary glimpse of him owing to the height of the osiers, I knew him for the Marsh Warbler as certainly as if I had caught him in my hand. It was not only the mimicry that made me sure of him, for a lively Sedge Warbler will of course sometimes indulge his fancy in this way : it was the sweet clear tone of the voice, with its rapid changes, its sudden stoppages, and its comparatively 86 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. rare lapses into sounds that could be called grating or sibilant. The next thing to be done was to procure wit- nesses and to find the nest; for my own evidence alone would fail to convince the scientific ornitho- logist. I summoned three competent witnesses in the course of the next three weeks, and though our united labours never revealed the nest, the conviction of each observer became in each case as decided as my own, and constituted a case too strong for even the hardest-hearted sceptic. The first was a young enthusiast from Oxford, who knew well the songs of all our common Warblers. I let him listen for half an hour alone, and when I joined him I found him thoroughly convinced that he had never heard this song before. The next was Mr. Aplin, who had not been in the osiers ten minutes before he declared himself fully satisfied that he was listening to the bird we had studied together in the Alps. That morning we heard a strange variety of imitations the Chaffinch, Thrush, Yellow Wagtail, Eedstart, Gold- finch, Greenfinch, Partridge, Swallow, Skylark, Whin- chat and Blackcap, were all laid under contribution in the course of two or three hours; all of them being birds whose song the artist could study at leisure from the osier-bed. We had also the satis- faction of seeing the bird well as well as we had seen him in Switzerland ; and also of finding a Eeed iv The Marsh Warbler 87 Warbler here, so that all three species of Acrocephali were quartered in this space of two acres and a half, for the Sedge Warbler, I need hardly say, was both abundant and noisy here. My third witness was my friend Mr. A. Holte Macpherson, whose name is familiar to readers of the Zoologist. He was less lucky than the others, for he only saw and heard the bird for a moment. He deserved better of it, for he got up before dawn, and spent the hours from three to eight in a fruitless search for the nest in a smaller osier-bed to which my bird seemed by this time to have moved. We were not to find a nest that year ; and it may have been, as Mr. Macpherson conjectured, that, as this was apparently the first visit of the species to our neighbourhood, one or more males had arrived alone, and, failing to find mates in spite of continual sing- ing, had given up the case as hopeless and gone else- where. However that might be, we had nothing for it but to hope that next year they would try their luck again, and give us the chance of completing ours. When the May of the present year (1893) came round with its early foliage and unceasing warmth, I began to listen at the osier-bed ; but the withies had been cut in the winter, and the appearance of the place was so much changed that I was inclined to doubt whether the birds would take to it again. 8 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. There was indeed no reason why it should not suit them, for in the Alps the cover which they affected was hardly so high or so dense as this ; but argu- ing from the ways of the Nightingale, which always abandons a wood of which the undergrowth has been cleared in the winter, I felt instinctively that the chance of success would this year be a doubtful one. And so it proved ; up to the middle of June I failed to catch even a fragment of the song, and instead of it the osier-bed began to resound with the whirring reel of the Grasshopper Warbler, a bird which I had never before heard so close to the village. I consoled myself as well as I could by watching this little curiosity performing from the top twig of a sapling on many a warm evening after sunset. On 20th June I was returning from a hot stroll, and languidly leaning over a gate some half mile further up the valley, when my eye chanced to fall on a spot which instantly suggested itself to me as the ideal place for a Marsh Warbler. It was a small bed of osiers, overgrown for the most part, sheltered on one side by a high railway embankment, and on the other by rising cultivated ground ; between it and the railway was a deep ditch of running water. It occurred to me as quite possible that my friends of last year might have found a home here ; and here in another five minutes I found them. Clearly in these parts an overgrown withy-bed is what they iv The Marsh Warbler 89 love best; and if ornithologists would give closer attention to such places, and boldly plunge into them, regardless of heat, insects, damp, and snakes, they might oftener come across a bird of which so little is still known in England. That day I did not attempt much, but waited until I could begin a patient watch. I noted that the railway embankment always a blessing to the naturalist would answer my purpose admirably. On the 21st I established myself under an umbrella on this flowery bank, and in less than half an hour was able to make a fair guess at the position of the nest. More than once I saw my bird dive into the willows at a point where they were but half-grown, and where search would not be very arduous. Like a Kingfisher swooping from his perch, I descended into the osiers, and there, ten yards from the hedge, I found a nest slung between young saplings as it were by four or five handles ; for the twigs were not worked through the whole structure, but only through the rim of it. It was nearly three feet from the ground, and, like all nests of this species that I have seen, conspicuous enough when you have come upon it, though hidden in a mass of stalks. There were no eggs in it, and as I could see daylight through the dry grasses of which it was chiefly composed, I concluded that it was still unfinished. In a day or two a good deal of moss had been QO Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. added to the outside of the structure a feature that I have never seen abroad ; and a few hairs had been worked into the lining. I began, however, to fear that it might be forsaken, for I thought I saw signs of trespassers in its neighbourhood, and once I was baffled and alarmed to find a ploughboy at work within twenty yards of it. I fancied too that it might turn out to be nothing more than the work of an eccentric Sedge Warbler, for a pair of those excit- able birds had once come very close to me while I was looking at it. But I sent for Mr. Macpherson from London to come and share my anxieties : my other two witnesses of last year being, the one in South America or rather on his way home and the other deep in mathematical problems in hot examination rooms at Oxford. Macpherson came on the 24th, and I showed him the nest that evening ; it was still without eggs, and I was beginning to despair of seeing any, for on the Monday following I must start for my holiday, one more brief holiday in the Alps. Next morning, as I was dressing, my friend broke in on me with the welcome news that an egg had been laid. An unwilling denizen of London, he had again been bathing himself in our country air, though experience had taught him that three o'clock is even too early. We were very soon at the* osier-bed, and I at once recognised the egg as that of a Marsh iv The Marsh Warbler 91 Warbler ; it was of a greenish white ground-colour, with many dull purplish spots and blotches, especially at the larger end. But our anxieties were even now hardly at an end ; for it was Sunday, the day on which the predatory ploughboy roams afield in quest of eggs, and to him a Marsh Warbler's egg is all the same as a Sparrow's. By this time too there were naturally traces of our doings at the entrance to the osiers, quite obvious enough to attract his attention. It was, in fact, absolutely necessary to set a watch. We divided the day between ourselves and a friendly gardener ; the rector of the parish, who was also interested in the discovery, taking a turn as sentinel in the afternoon. The railway afforded us an excellent vantage-ground, and there we marched up and down like sentinels on a rampart, occasion- ally varying our duty with a search for other nests. At last the evening of that long hot day arrived, and we were able to depart in peace. Macpherson had to return to London by the early train next morning ; but we previously held a council, at which it was decided to take the nest at once, partly because it would be welcome to the Oxford Museum, partly because it would be no longer safe from the village boys, as I was about to go abroad. So in the morning of the 26th a procession started for the osier-bed, consisting of the rector, his family, and myself, fully armed with everything 92 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. necessary to cut away the saplings above and below the nest, and so to preserve it in its original position for exhibition. This was successfully accomplished, and we were delighted to find that a second egg had been laid in the night. In the afternoon I started on my journey to Switzerland, and on the Thursday morning my companion and I (he it was who had been my first witness the year before) found at Stanzstadt another beautiful nest containing five eggs, slung not in saplings or meadowsweet, but in a thick bunch of a nettle-like plant, whose name I do not know. The same day we heard and saw many other Marsh Warblers, and later experience makes me certain that they may be looked for anywhere in Switzerland where there is plenty of mossy or reedy ground, on the margin of lakes or rivers. I must needs say a word in the last place of the personal appearance of this intimate friend of mine ; but this, I must confess, is the most difficult and the least interesting point about him. Of the three species of the genus Acrocephalus which breed every year in these islands, one, the Sedge Warbler (A. pTiragmitis) is easily distinguishable by the yellowish stripe over each eye, as well as by his habits, eggs, and vociferous outpourings of song. But the other two, the Eeed and Marsh Warblers (A. streperus and A. palustris) have grown into distinct species not so much through variations in the colour of their iv The Marsh Warbler 93 plumage as in their habits, song, and the colour of their eggs. It is, in fact, very difficult indeed, even for a practised ornithologist, to distinguish skins of the two species; 1 and, as will be seen from Mr. Howard Saunders' Manual of British Birds, it is almost hopeless to attempt to figure the two in such a way as to make it clear what the points of differ- ence are. When Professor Newton was editing the first two volumes of Yarrell's well-known work he did not feel justified in treating the Marsh Warbler as a distinct British species ; for he had no personal acquaintance with the living bird, and the evidence of such skins as he had seen was to his exact mind inconclusive. The book which I suppose is most popular among amateurs, that of the late Mr. Morris, leaves the Marsh Warbler out altogether, even in the last editions. For information about the bird's dress we must go to Mr. Harting's Summer Migrants, or to the account of Professor Fatio of Geneva, as translated in part in Dr. Bree's Birds of Europe, or to Mr. Seebohm's British Birds, or to the colossal work of Mr. Dresser. But I cannot say that these skilled authorities by any means agree among them- selves ; and I doubt respectfully whether any one of 1 Mr. Saunders tells me, however, that he can distinguish them at a glance by the general coloration : so too Mr. Seebohm. Yet Canon Tristram, with his vast experience of skins, assures me that he cannot easily do so ; and I think Professor Newton finds the same difficulty. 94 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. them has examined a really extensive series of the skins of both our species for purposes of comparison. The fact is that we must take the bird as he has chosen in the course of ages to make himself recog- nisable by his song, or, it may be, by his eggs. And we must look out for that song and those eggs not on the reedy banks of streams, where the Reed Warbler is most commonly to be found, but on dry ground not far from water, where there is some kind of low cover such as that which is afforded by osiers, meadowsweet, nettles, and other plants which thrust up stems in crowded bunches. When we have made sure of him in this way we can examine his appear- ance at leisure, for if the cover be not too dense he will soon be seen perched on some prominent stalk, pour- ing forth his " chanson matinale" as Fatio aptly calls it. The first time I ever watched him thus delight- fully engaged I took a note of his appearance on the spot, and the points I specially noticed were his white throat, which is fluffed out as he sings, his brown head without any visible stripe over the eye though there seems to be reason to believe that this becomes slightly apparent in mature individuals, his olive -brown back, and flesh-coloured legs. This description tallies fairly well with those of more learned ornithologists, and I do not think that I could now add anything of importance to it. The Eeed Warbler as a living bird differs slightly in having a iv The Marsh Warbler 95 more rufous back and slate-coloured legs ; but these differences soon cease to be at all obvious when the birds have been dead some time, and it is this which has caused so much difficulty in identifying the skins of the two species, and in using them for illustration in pictures. In telling the whole history of my acquaintance with the bird, I have been aiming at giving those who have not yet met with it a better chance of dis- covering it than they would gain from even the best handbooks. I have told them my own failures and difficulties, in order that they may avoid such experi- ences themselves, and may not waste time in looking for the bird in places where they are not likely to find him. And I can confidently assure them that a search for a Marsh Warbler in a labyrinthine osier- bed may have wonderful charms for an enthusiast, and that flies and gnats, heat and damp, wet ditches and stinging nettles, will lose all their power to annoy when once you have caught the sweet and silvery voice of the bird you have come to make friends with. 1 1 These last words excited the scorn of a reviewer in the Manchester Guardian, into whose hands this paper fell when issued as a separate pamphlet. But I let them stand ; for the birds, by returning to the identical spot this June (1894), have shown that they bore me no permanent ill-will for taking their first nest last year, the only nest, so far as I can remember, that I have ever taken in my life. I need hardly add that I left them unmolested this time. CHAPTER V A CHAPTER ON WAGTAILS WERE I condemned to live on a desert island, I should wish to have some birds, as well as books, for my companions. Among books I should need some few of those that abound in such choice detail as will easily slip off the mind, and as easily be recalled and enjoyed at the next perusal a good old word, by the way, which cannot be applied to the reading of every book. Boswell, The Vicar, Jane Austen, Elia, are of this kind ; we can peruse them, the page lies open a while for leisurely enjoyment, and is not feverishly turned. I would have birds too that can be perused ; not hasty ones that are up and away the moment they catch sight of you, nor huge ones, such as Mr. Hudson loves, sailing solemnly over your head and vanishing over the hill while you adjust your glass. I would have little ones that come and go regardless of you, dallying about close at hand, pursuing their avocations while you sit and watch them with the same fresh interest that drew you to them twenty years ago. I CHAP, v A Chapter on Wagtails 97 would have Warblers, Redstarts, Flycatchers, or, better still, Wagtails. It is impossible ever to weary of Wagtails. We are never altogether without them, yet whenever they present themselves to us we are constrained to give them our attention. Some birds you can glance at as you walk and talk, but no sooner does a Wagtail alight on the path in front of you than he compels you to pause and look at him carefully. There are, indeed, scientific reasons why Wagtails should always be noticed ; bub apart from these there is a never- failing pleasure in contemplating their symmetry of form, their beauty of colouring, their graceful flight, their unobtrusive confidence, and that constant un- resting activity of theirs an activity which some mysterious grace of mental build never suffers to degenerate into fidgetiness. There are Wagtails in most parts of the world, and from Britain eastwards to Japan they are abundant, puzzling the ornithologist with their endless varieties of plumage, and utterly declining to be neatly and finally classified. The whole group, it is true, is perfectly well defined, if not by structure, at least by outward appearance, habit, and motion ; but the species within the group run into each other in a way which seems to be as baffling as it is instructive. No family of birds has more to tell us of the nature and growth of species ; but none needs more careful H 98 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. handling, more laborious investigation and travel. Into this labyrinth, however, I am not competent to venture ; I may refer once or twice to two species which are, strictly speaking, Continental, but I shall have enough to say, without travelling further, about the three which habitually breed in our island. These three are first, the Pied Wagtail, commonly known as the Water Wagtail or Dishwasher, the black and white bird which we all know so well ; next, the Yellow Wagtail of the pasture meadows and lazy streams, which comes to us in spring and leaves us in autumn ; thirdly, the so-called Gray Wagtail of the mountain brooks and rivers, which can always be distinguished from the others by its very long tail. All these three resemble each other closely in their habits, as well as in their build. They all love the neighbourhood of water; they all have the same peculiar flight a graceful flight, consisting of succes- sive upward and downward curves, which enables us to detect them even at a long distance. They all have the same quality of voice a short and shrill musical whistle, which cannot be confused with the note of any other bird, unless it be indeed with that of their nearest relations the Pipits. They all move their tails gently up and down, build their nests on or close to the ground, and lay eggs of which the ground- colour is nearly always a pale bluish white, spotted more or less with brown or gray. They all walk, or v A Chapter on Wagtails 99 rather run, instead of hopping, their delicate little legs being often in such swift motion as hardly to be seen as they go ; and all feed chiefly on insects largely, I think, on minute beetles and love our British streams and meadows for the never-failing abundance of food they find there. And I should add that in all our three birds the two outer tail-feathers are white, and become conspicuous the moment their owner flies or moves his tail in the familiar way : a characteristic of which I may have something to say later on. These are the generic peculiarities of the group, and, as far as I know, they are common to all true Wagtails. But our three British species, though they are alike in so many ways, and are without doubt all descended from a single ancestral type, have developed features which mark them off very clearly from each other. The colouring, for example, is so distinct in the plumage of the adult male birds in breeding dress, as to be recognised at once even by the inexperienced ; and it is interesting to find that they then represent three several types of the world's Wagtails. One is black and white, with a jet-black gorget ; one is yellow and olive-brown, with no black at all ; and the third, which stands between the two, though I take him last in this chapter, is gray above, bright yellow beneath, and has the same black throat ornament as his Pied cousin. Or to put it shortly, i oo Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. one is typical of a black series, another of a yellow series ; while the third has something to show us both of black and yellow. Our British Wagtails, then, are well worth careful study ; for, however far an inquirer may travel in quest of Wagtails, he is not likely to find any, either in museums or in nature, which do not come near to one of these three types. Let us begin with the black and white bird ; him at least we can hardly fail to find at any time of the year. But where shall we look for him ? Not necessarily by the brook-side ; but if a farmyard pond is at hand, or a bit of shallow in the stream a miniature ford, perhaps, with stepping-stones you may do well to give a glance there. In spring or autumn try a field which is being ploughed ; the first field the farmer turns is sure to have its Pied Wagtails. If they chance to be on migration they will collect there to enjoy the minute creatures which the plough ex- poses, and you may see scores and even hundreds of them hard at work together. The chance will be a good one, if it be autumn, for noting the variety of plumage in both old and young, and for making so sure of this bird that you can never mistake him for his whiter cousin of the Continent. In the breeding season a freshly-mown lawn has a great attraction for him ; the meadow grass is then either growing to hay or getting so thick and coarse that it is not easy to find the insects in it. I fancy too that all Wagtails v A Chapter on Wagtails 101 like to use their little legs freely, unhampered by thick stalks of crowded herbage ; on a lawn they can see insects at a distance, and run with sudden spurts, half flying too sometimes, to seize them. While eating and while running the tail is mostly still; but no sooner is the run over and a fresh morsel pounced on, than it is moved up and down rapidly, showing plainly the two outer white feathers. But his nest may be some distance away from the lawn he patronises, and we are not likely to find it unless we have ample time to watch. This bird is very apt to choose odd places, and many stories have been told of his caprice in this way. Caprice it may indeed seem to us, but I cannot but think it has an object to escape the constant persecution of the Cuckoo. It was for this reason, I am sure, that a pair in the garden of a friend of mine built a nest in the far recesses of a greenhouse, among the flowerpots. This nest was a singular one, and must have cost the birds infinitely more labour than usual ; for as it was not fitted into any hole, or supported by anything but the shelf on which it stood, a strong sub- structure had to be built first, on which it could securely rest. The mass of dry grass and moss was quite wonderful, and all the more pity that it should have been collected in vain. The pair escaped from one enemy only to fall victims to another. The Cuckoo found them out, but was herself found out IO2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. by the gardener before she had actually deposited her egg ; and all might have gone well if a cat had not strayed that way. That the Cuckoo should have followed the birds into the greenhouse just at the time when all was ripe for its mischief for there were then four eggs in the nest seems to me to show that it had been watching this pair of birds for some time ; this the Wagtails well knew, and, abandoning perhaps their original intention, chose this unlikely place. I think this must also be the explanation of that curious fondness of this bird for railway stations, which I have noticed not only in my own parish but in all parts of the kingdom. When I say that almost every country station has its pair, I am not going very much beyond the facts. Here at Kingham it has been so ever since I began to notice birds ; the familiar little double note from the station roof is so well known to me that I now barely stop to notice it. At one time they used to build in the crevices of the stacks of coal; this year there was a nest almost under the signal-box, and just beneath the massive wooden posts fixed at the end of a siding to resist the force of shunted trucks. They are conspicuous birds, and the Cuckoo would soon find them out if they gave him a fair chance ; but the bustle of men and trains perhaps deters the malignant enemy. 1 1 I have somewhere read of a pair that built on the axle of a shunted railway carriage on a branch line ; when the carriage was v A Chapter on Wagtails 103 When the nesting time is over, the parents and their young broods, after spending the day on lawn or meadow, will associate in roosting in some con- venient cover. Early in July I have found them in numbers in a small osier-bed, while looking for the Marsh Warbler towards sunset. But the autumn is the time to look out for their great gatherings. Then they travel in multitudes, hardly observable by day, when they are often on the newly-ploughed fields, but if you should happen to come upon them at nightfall, fairly astonishing you with their numbers. On the 9th of last October, the last day of my long vacation, I strolled at sunset down to the meadow of which part is occupied by the osier-bed that first attracted the Marsh Warbler; it was fast getting dark, but I at once heard the shrill double notes all round me. All along the stream I put Pied Wag- tails up at every step ; then turning up to the railway which runs above the field, I saw the tele- graph wires covered with them. With the help of the glass I counted forty -five on the wires and another forty on the grass just below them ; then I went to the osier-bed and threw a stone into it, which brought out a cloud of wagtails, disturbed from their first sleep. The next time I was able to pay this wonderful brought into use again the hen bird continued to sit on her eggs during successive journeys, and finally reared her young. 1 04 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. field a visit there was only a pair or two to be seen, and I have no doubt that this great gathering meant migration. We have abundant evidence that the Pied Wagtail passes over to the Continent in great numbers in the autumn, though there are always enough left behind to let us feel that they are still with us. Some years ago an old friend of mine, a master at Westward Ho College in North Devon, wrote to me just at the end of September describing a strange immigration of Pied Wagtails which had occurred there a day or two before. It was a warm evening, and the windows of the large school building, which fronts the sea, were open, and the lights within were of course visible out at sea. Suddenly the rooms were invaded by a host of Pied Wagtails, which swarmed in, circling round and round the ceiling like bats, and so distracted that they could be caught with butterfly nets. These were probably the Welsh Wagtails, making their autumnal journey to the south coast of England on their way to the Continent ; and on this same coast of North Devon parties may be seen in the autumn making progress towards the west, to cross the county to the southern coast, where they seem to congregate for further travel. We can trace this travel, and find that it is now directed towards the east. On the coast of Dorset I have seen them gathered in vast numbers in late v A Chapter on Wagtails i o 5 September; and I need only refer to Mr. Knox's Ornithological Rambles in Sussex for a well-known and admirable account of their journeying in that district. Somewhat further eastward they cross the Channel, and some at least then go southward along the French coast, for we catch a glimpse of them again in Portugal. Mr. W. C. Tait in the Ibis for 1887 tells us that this species "arrives in the neighbourhood of Oporto about the 20th of October, winters here, moults to summer plumage in March, and departs." * Once arrived on the Continent, they must find themselves comparative strangers : for though they are among their own kin, the White Wagtails, they do not seem to be always received with the hos- pitality due to near relations. Mr. Tait goes on to tell us that he has seen Pied Wagtails attacked on their arrival by the resident White Wagtails, who looked on them as intruders. Yet these two species incomplete they may be as species, yet something more than mere races or varying forms will some- times associate, and even mate, together. The White Wagtail, which is a pretty constant visitor to this country in spring, may sometimes find himself (or herself) without a mate, and take up with a Pied Wagtail in default of his own kind. Such a pair were found in Norfolk by Lord Walsingham, and 1 Vol. v. No. 18, p. 186. io6 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. presented to the British Museum with their nest and young. On 25th June 1890 I was walking with Mr. 0. V. Aplin near Banbury, when by a large mill-pond we found a pair of Wagtails, of which the male was undoubtedly a Pied Wagtail, while the female was gray all over, including the head. That this female was a White Wagtail was Mr. Aplin's conclusion on the spot, and I believe that he still thinks so. The female White Wagtail, he told me, occasionally has a gray head, instead of the neat black cap that contrasts so strikingly with the pearl-gray of the back in this species ; and, if I recollect right, we were able to confirm this state- ment during a visit to the Continent the next year. But the endless varieties of Wagtail plumage, in old and young, and male and female, at different times of the year, must be left to those who have time and materials for a close and accurate study. When the Pied Wagtail was first distinguished by naturalists from its Continental cousins, it re- ceived the unfortunate name of Motacilla lugubris, or the Wagtail in mourning, in allusion to its black and white dress. 1 To give such a name to such a bird is to forget that he is something more than an 1 It is now generally known as M. Yarrellii, a name given it by Gould in honour of his friend Yarrell. Thus both those forms of Wagtail which are specially associated with this country bear very appropriately the names of English naturalists. The Continental forms are M. alba and M. flava. v A Chapter on Wagtails 107 " arrangement " in feathers ; I do not think that a Wagtail could look mournful even under the most painful circumstances. No such misfortune, I am glad to say, has happened to the Yellow Wagtail, the sprightliest, boldest, and perhaps the happiest, of its kind. It has often been called, in Latin as well as English, simply the Yellow Wagtail; but the greater number of authors have given it, in a Latin form, the name of the great English naturalist John Eay, and even in common speech we often speak of it as Eay's Wagtail It received this honourable name some half a century ago, because it was then first discovered that, like the Pied Wagtail, it is almost peculiar to Britain, and is quite distinct from the common Yellow Wagtail of the Continent. I have never myself seen it abroad, and it is certainly a rare straggler at any distance from the shores that lie opposite our island. Strange to say, it is found in Central Asia in summer; and, as it is known to winter in Africa, even as far south as the Transvaal, it may be that two currents of Yellow Wagtails leave Africa in the spring, the one going north-east to Asia, and the other north-west to Great Britain. Here at least is one of those curious involved bird-mysteries which make the science of ornithology more fascinating the more our knowledge of it advances. And, to add to our perplexity, we have also to face the fact that the io8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. space between these two currents is occupied by several other kinds of Yellow Wagtails, all much alike in shape and habits, and for the most part in hue, but differing just in some one point of plumage, and mixing themselves up together in the most delightful confusion, as if to make the men of science pay for classifying them. 1 The only one of these I shall mention here is the Blue-headed Wagtail of the Continent, the type of its class. A few of these seem to come to us every year ; and just as it is worth while always to look at Pied Wagtails to make sure that they are not White Wagtails, so it is as well to glance at all yellow birds we see, in case we should some day meet with one that has a distinctly bluish head, and a white stripe over the eye instead of a yellow one. A beginner, indeed, may easily confuse the female of the common species for the rarity he is looking out for; and he should never be satisfied until he has watched his bird at a very short distance, and if possible with a good field-glass. Though Oxford is a favourite haunt of Yellow Wagtails, I have in the course of many years detected but two or three of the rarer species. 1 See Seebohra's British Birds, vol. ii. p. 212 ; Giglioli's Avifauna Italica, p. 81. In the Zoologist for November 1892 is an interesting note by Mr. John Cordeaux on the peculiar migration of this bird. v A Chapter on Wagtails 109 These most charming birds come to Oxford about the middle of April. 1 They come up the river, and gather in great numbers on that vast meadow above the city known as Port Meadow; which almost deserves a chapter to itself, so interesting is its history, so rich its treasures of birds and plants, and so various its aspect in flood and frost, under sun- shine and shower. Here, on the 26th of April 1887, I saw a more wonderful gathering of Yellow Wag- tails than I have ever seen since, or am likely ever to see again. Mr. Arthur Macpherson had come into my rooms the evening before, to tell me that he had seen some Dunlins on the bank of the Isis, where it bounds this great meadow to the west. As these birds of the sea-shore had never before been reported to me, I started the next afternoon, hindered and baffled by a strong and bitter wind which soon turned to pelting rain, and by a toothache which raged in sympathy with the elements ; but I was rewarded for my pains. I found the Dunlins ; but I found also what was far more wonderful and beautiful the whole length of the river's bank, on the meadow side of it, occupied by countless Yellow Wagtails. As I walked along they got up literally 1 They are apt, like some other migrants, to appear earlier in the west country : I have seen one at Westward Ho on 4th April, in company with newly-arrived Pied Wagtails in brilliant plumage. The latest date in the autumn I have a record of is 10th October. 1 1 o Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. from under my feet ; for they were sheltering just beneath the meadow's lip, and I came upon them quite unawares. When a turn in the bank gave me a view ahead, I could see the turf spotted all over with the brilliant yellow of their breasts ; for I was walking with the wind, and they, of course, were facing it, to avoid having their plumage uncomfort- ably handled by the gusts. They were not afraid of me, and settled down again directly I had passed on, so that my progress was like that of a haymaking machine, which just lifts the hay as it passes, and then lets it settle down again after dallying a moment with the breeze. These birds had clearly only just arrived after their long journey from Africa, and I think they must have come together and unpaired ; the greater num- ber of them were males. 1 Their numbers diminished regularly day by day, and at the same time I began to see pairs in their usual places in the neighbourhood evidently preparing to nest. In a few days they were nearly all distributed over the country-side. Since then I have looked out for them every year, and have always seen plenty in mid- April on this same meadow, but never again such a wonderful assemblage. The nearest approach to it was on 22nd April of this present year, 1894. I had walked 1 I never, however, remember to have seen a newly-arrived flock of this species without at least two or three females in it. v A Chapter on Wagtails 1 1 1 some miles up the river without seeing a single Wag- tail, and had made up my mind that they had not yet come, when, as I was returning home across the Port Meadow, my dog ran into a bevy of them, and sent them dancing into the air, uttering their bright shrill whistle. As before, they soon settled down again ; and now I noticed how hard it was to see them on the ground. Their greenish-brown backs assimilated admirably with the freshly-grown grass, and their breasts were hardly to be distinguished from the marigolds among which they had settled. They were not in such numbers as in 1887, and indeed they are less numerous all round us this year than usual a diminution which is by no means to be attributed to the depredations of mankind, as some unthinking persons would have us believe in the case of this and other interesting species. Few birds are so little molested as the Yellow Wagtail, for their nests are very hard to find, and rarely or never discovered by the ploughboy ; and we must be content to confess our ignorance of the causes which increase or diminish their numbers. 1 Of the nesting of the Yellow Wagtail among these marigolds and buttercups I can say nothing from 1 So too with the Gray Wagtail, which during the last year has (in my experience) been far less common than it was a few years ago. But this present autumn (1894) it has reappeared in its accustomed winter haunts. 1 1 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. personal experience. I have never found the nest, and it is so well concealed as to have baffled the most indefatigable nest-finder I know. The birds are so restless, and so happily artful in misleading you, that even if you know within twenty yards or so where the nest must be, the task of finding it needs more time and patience than most of us have to spare. To judge by the beautiful specimen in Lord Walsingham's collection at South Kensington, the nest itself is so well concealed as to escape your notice even if you are almost treading on it ; and the eggs are spotted all over with a soft yellowish brown, which helps to hide them among the yellow -green stalks of the grass and the darker shadows cast by taller plants. 1 But though it thus hides its nest and eggs with infinite care, it is astonishing how bold this little bird will be in the breeding time ; more than once it has let me approach it within a yard or two as it runs delicately through the grass, picking off invisible insects from the fresh shoots ; and several times I have known it decoy both me and my dog away from the nest, by letting us come very close, and then running or half flying a little way on in front. It knows very well that a dog is dangerous ; and I once 1 They do not invariably nest among the flowers and herbage ; a nest was found this spring on a dunghill near my village. As the manure was needed on the farm, it was taken, eggs and all. v A Chapter on Wagtails 1 1 3 saw both cock and hen stand up to Billy in such a ludicrously determined way, the cock in front as if to protect his wife, that I stopped the dog with a sign, and the big and little animals continued to regard each other on equal terms, until my irre- pressible laughter sent the Wagtails off. When the young are able to fly, I know no more beautiful sight than to watch them playing in a hay- field. True, they are not of the bright yellow their parents wear, they are often almost wholly brown, though they differ considerably from each other; but their movements in the air it is a constant pleasure to watch. They dance and spring and twist and turn, now they are on the ground, now high in air, now at the other end of the field, and now as suddenly back again. Nor do they limit themselves to the hay-fields, or to the pastures where they run about among the legs of the grazing cattle. I have repeatedly seen them in osier-beds, on telegraph wires, on the top branches of high trees, and in corn- fields, perching on the ears of wheat. So light and sylph -like are they that the stalks were hardly bent beneath their weight; and I could not help singling out one of these on which a bird had been resting, and trying to measure with the touch of my finger the weight of that fairy figure. Another day I watched a family perched upon the telegraph wires ; they let me come close underneath them, and I 1 1 4 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. now and then performed the feat of running side- ways along the wires, holding on chiefly by means of the hind claw, which is very long. This claw was brought round below the wire to join the others, and thus around each wire a complete little ring was formed, which seemed to slide along it when the birds moved. The tail of this bird is not so long in proportion as in the two other Wagtails, nor is it moved so frequently or regularly. As he runs about among the cows you will see very little " wagging " going on hardly more than in the common Meadow-pipit. But no sooner does he take to flight than his tail becomes the most conspicuous part of him ; it seems to twist and open, showing clearly the pure white outer feathers, and when he once more alights, it will be vibrated two or three times. Then the movement ceases, and the white is hardly to be seen. The mention of tails brings me naturally to the last and the most beautiful of our three species, the so-called Gray Wagtail of the running streams; for in his case the tail is not only the most prominent feature, as it is in all Wagtails, but is longer than in the rest, and in much more constant motion. Here there are no ornithological puzzles to detain us. It seems that you may roam over the whole continents of Europe and Asia, and see the same bird that v A Chapter on Wagtails 1 1 5 haunts our own mountain streams. They say, indeed, that in the East his tail is a trifle shorter; and I have a note, written before I knew this, that in the Alps the tails struck me as being hardly so long as they are with us ; but they are quite long enough to mark the bird, and they are everywhere moved up and down with that grave and regular persistence which belongs to no other Wagtail. Every fisherman knows the Gray Wagtail, and will bear me out when I say once more that gray is not quite the word for him. If he stands facing you as you fish up-stream, he will show you his black gorget of the breeding season, and the beautiful yellow of his under parts, which has given him the scientific name of sulphur m ; or if you chance to see him from behind, though his head and back will show slate-gray, yet this as it nears the tail becomes greenish-yellow, and the tail itself is not gray, but nearly black in colour, with the two outer feathers bright white. The bird is in fact at a first glance not unlike the Yellow Wagtail, with which it has often been confused; but the black gorget brings it rather into relation with the Pied Wagtail, which has the same conspicuous addition to its dress in spring. Yet from both birds it is quite distinct, in habits as well as appearance, and seems to stand entirely by itself in the little world of Wagtails. 1 1 6 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. In this island it is always resident ; l but here, and apparently in all countries where it dwells, it desires a change of scene, and perhaps of food, in autumn. In the lower and natter lands it is rarely seen in spring and summer ; in Oxfordshire it seldom fails to appear in September or even earlier, and as regularly leaves us in January or February. 2 Now and again a pair will stay to breed by some lock or mill-dam, where they find the constant rush of water which they so dearly love ; but only once, so far as I know, has the nest been actually found in our county. In June 1890, during the same walk which showed us the Pied and White Wagtails interbreeding, Mr. Aplin and I were passing another mill, when I caught sight of a long tail moving up and down by the water-side under the long herbage. A Gray Wagtail in June meant a nest for certain, and we found it almost at once in the wall of the mill -rush ; two eggs had been hatched, and the nestlings were ash-gray above, and distinctly yellow beneath. While we were looking at them the parents continued to dance in the air 1 I have little doubt, however, that some cross to the Continent every autumn. They appear regularly in September on the coast of Dorset, in a dry chalky country which they would never patronise but on a journey. 2 It is a melancholy fact that we have seen less of them the last year or two ; last winter (1893-4) I hardly saw one. I am quite unable to account for this ; certainly it is not due to persecution. v A Chapter on Wagtails 1 1 7 about us, uttering a peculiar note of alarm ; their brilliant colours and exquisitely elegant movements kept us watching them much longer than they themselves could have wished. I have once known this bird build at some little distance from tumbling water, and in a position where I should never have thought of looking for the nest. I was strolling before breakfast in the garden of the Hotel Titlis at Engelberg, in which there is a small ornamental water, with a boat and boathouse. Standing on a bridge which crossed this water, I watched a Gray Wagtail with food in its bill which was hovering about the entrance of this boathouse. At last it went in, and, following it, I found the nest on the timber shelf from which the roof sprang. Later on, with the help of Mr. Playne's lusty shoulders, I managed to get a look into it ; it was large and untidy, like the Pied Wagtail's nest in the greenhouse, or like those of the Spotted Fly- catcher which, until certain "improvements" took place, used every year to be built in a similar position in the garden of the excellent Hotel Bellevue at Bern. So long as the young broods are unable wholly to shift for themselves, they seem to keep together under the eye of the parents, and will play together like Wagtails of other kinds. On 26th June 188*7 I was strolling on a mountain path in the Bernese 1 1 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. Oberland, and carne suddenly into a little glen, down which a stream rushed babbling, at the foot of a wall of rock some fifty feet high. Dancing about stream and rock, like black and yellow fairies, and occasionally resting on the rock's face, or on the young pines which grew about it, was a family, or perhaps two families, of these most graceful birds. So restless were they, so quick and nimble, that the eye could hardly follow them, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I got my glass fixed on one of them. The same agility is shown when they come down in September from the mountains, which are then getting too cool for them, and congregate by the banks of some large river in a valley. I have seen them in great numbers just after their arrival, very busy in catching flies over the water of a rushing glacier -stream, and mixing with their cousins the White Wagtails ; the air was full of dancing birds, and the banks alive with gently- moving tails. As they hung in air over the stream, the tail was often spread out wide, like that of a hovering Kestrel, while the rapidly -moving wings danced them up and down. But as a rule, when grown older, the Gray Wag- tails are somewhat quiet and deliberate in their ways, though always full of grace; they are, if I may use the word of both sexes, extremely ladylike birds. And there is a look in them of great content, v A Chapter on Wagtails 119 and even of self-satisfaction, as they trip along, unaware that they are observed, by the water's edge ; with no lack of food, with the pleasant noise of the water ever in their ears, and with those long tails of theirs perpetually moving up and down, as if in rhythm with the water. It is worth noting that the motion of these tails is not exactly that which we have observed in the other two species ; it is not so purely a tail-motion, and it is less rapid and more regular. It is a motion of the whole body from the breast tailwards ; it is only the great length of the feathers that gives it the appearance of belonging to the tail only. The verb to wag is utterly inapplic- able to it, nor can I think of any word which will exactly express it. One other bird that haunts our British streams has the very same movement of the whole body, and this is one which has but little tail the Common Sandpiper. Before I leave these tails I have yet a few words to say about them. In this scientific age, when questions beginning with why are always being asked, if seldom finally answered, I might feel it a duty to the Wagtails to ask the reason of their tail- motions. I do not indeed promise to explain them, not at least with the easy conviction of a certain popular writer, who (though it is but lately that he learnt the difference between the Gray and the Yellow Wagtails) assures us boldly that the object I2O Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. of the motion is to aid the bird in balancing itself. It is true enough, no doubt, that the tail of every bird is of use to it in this way, especially in the air ; but the peculiar motion of the tails I am writing of cannot possibly be needed for this purpose. If the bird were likely to topple over into the water while sitting on the edge of a stone, a supposition in itself absurd, I imagine that it would most natu- rally keep its tail well down, rather than wave it up and down rapidly. But surely no bird needs any peculiar action to enable it to keep its equi- poise ; even a sparrow without a tail can do this perfectly well. Again, if the Wagtails need long tails and a peculiar motion to keep them steady, how does the Dipper manage a bird that needs balancing on slippery stones as much at least as they ? His tail is short, his form less shapely than that of a Wagtail, and as he sits on the edge of a stone making bows at you, he takes no such pre- cautions to save himself from a tumble as in his ignorance of a bird's make and habits this writer attributes to the Wagtails. For several years I have closely observed the tail-motions, not only of Wagtails, but of a great variety of birds, and I may fairly venture to express an opinion about them. It is a familiar fact that many animals use their tails to express certain emotions ; for the tail is directly connected with the v A Chapter on Wagtails 121 spinal cord and the brain, and may become an index or reflector of what is going on within that brain. Tails may of course be used in different ways ; the cat waves its tail when it is angry, the dog when it is pleased. That is merely matter of habit ; but in each case the motion is the result of some affection of the nervous system. Now the nervous system of birds is very sensitive, if we may judge by their restlessness, and by the extreme vigilance and rapidity of their sight and all their motions. And this in many birds, and especially in small ones, is apt to show itself in the tail, which is flickered horizontally, as in the Eedstart, or jerked upwards, as in the Wren and Moorhen, or twitched several times in a minute, as in the Yellowhammer and Eeed Bunting, the Wheatear and Whinchat, and others. 1 The motion may mean either simple satis- faction, or sometimes distress and alarm. With most of the birds I have mentioned the former is the cause, though not, I think, invariably; but watch a Ked-backed Shrike as you approach his nest or young, and you will see a good example of the effect of anger on a tail. He sits on the top of the hedge, swinging his tail from side to side, as well as up and down, with a motion quite peculiar to 1 A motion of the wings often accompanies that of the tail ; and in some birds, as the Chats and most Buntings, a note of some kind is uttered at the same time. 122 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. himself, and uttering cries that make the meaning of the motion unmistakable. The tail- motion of the Wagtails, if I am not mis- taken, is no great mystery; it is no more than a nervous trick, which in their case, as in that of so many others, expresses happiness and satisfaction. The Pied Wagtail which I watched on the lawn half an hour ago showed me this as plainly as possible. When he first alighted on the lawn he " wagged " his tail, and every time he caught an insect he did so. The Gray Wagtail, a quieter bird, as we have seen, has developed a habit of constant motion which is, indeed, second nature with him, and as plainly speaks his content with his surroundings as does the flicker of the Eedstart in the orchard. But we are not yet quite at the end of the matter. Every one who has noticed these tail-motions at all must have been struck by their constant correlation with those white feathers which are so conspicuous in the Wagtails. And the Wagtails are by no means alone in this peculiarity ; for it is astonishing how many European birds show white either in their tails or tail-coverts, and how large a number of these have some nervous trick which makes this white conspicu- ous. 1 The Moorhen is a good example. I have seen 1 When the tails are not made conspicuous by white (or in a few cases red) feathers, there is as a rule no special tail - motion. Skulking birds, like many of the Warblers, have neither motion nor v A Chapter on Wagtails 123 her leading her young brood across the water, jerking her tail so that its white is constantly visible to them, and at the same time calling them to follow the standard they see thus held out for them. I have seen an old Eeed Bunting sitting on a rail and calling his young about him, while at every twitch of his tail it was just so much expanded as to show the white, and with the white his position. I believe, then, that in these and some other instances the nervous trick has a secondary use ; it is not only a sign of satisfaction, but also a signal, and the white is a recognition mark, as Mr. Wallace has called it. If I were to go into the whole question of recog- nition marks in birds, I should be wandering beyond the limits of this chapter. Let me finish it, before I am tempted to stray further, by asking those who find a pleasure in Wagtails to observe their tails at leisure, and to let me know if they find reason to doubt that their motion is a nervous habit, arising in the first instance from mental satisfaction, but capable of being turned to good account as signals to their families and friends. white. And it is worth noting that birds which have both are apt to choose conspicuous places for perching, as the Wheatear, Stonechat, Whinchat, Bullfinch, the Shrikes, and the Buntings. CHAPTEE VI ON THE SONGS OF BIRDS IN this chapter I shall be on ground that is in one sense familiar to every one. Even those who can barely distinguish the song of a Blackbird from that of a Wren have at least some idea of what a bird's voice sounds like. To almost all of us the songs of birds are as welcome in spring as the wild roses are in June or the fireside at Christmas. And may we not add that, just as birds are of all animals the most beautiful and fascinating in their movements and habits, so of all the sounds which wild nature brings to the human ear their songs are the most powerful in their contribution to our happiness? Men high and low, rich and poor, have always felt this, and always will feel it ; admitting, half unconsciously perhaps, the spell of the music in spring, and missing it in winter from the leafless trees those "bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang." I have called these utterances music, and the ex- quisite line I have just quoted from Shakespeare CHAP, vi On the Songs of Birds 125 shows that he, like all true poets ancient and modern, thought of them as music and song in something more than metaphor. But as one whose enjoyment and knowledge of music is much older even than his study of ornithology, I will venture to raise a question about their musical quality which I have never seen quite adequately discussed. In what sense can we truly call them music? What is their relation to our modern musical art ? Without doubt the best of them consist chiefly of musical sounds, and are not merely noises, for they are produced by an instrument the same in kind, though not the same in the detail of its mechanism, as the human voice and some of our musical instru- ments. I say the lest of them; for we must not forget that the birds which have learnt to play upon their instrument with a really pleasing result are very few indeed, and that some have that instrument incom- plete, while a few do not possess it at all. But where it is perfect the singing apparatus of a bird is a legitimate musical instrument, consisting of a long tube and a tiny membrane which vibrates under the transmission of air from the lungs, and it is played upon, or modulated, by muscles which tighten and relax like the lips of a performer on a reed instru- ment. The method of producing the sound is in fact very much the same in the bird and in a reed instru- ment ; and this may account for what I may call the 126 Stimmer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. reedy quality of the voices of most birds, for even those of Blackbird and Blackcap, mellow as they seem, will be found to have something of this quality if we approach the birds quite closely. To make this point a little clearer I place side by side a cut of the simplest form of oboe, and one of the normal type of vocal instrument in a bird. FIG. A. FIG. B. In A the sound is produced by the reed affixed to the small end of the instrument, which vibrates between the lips of the player as he breathes air into it from his lungs. The reed, I should say, is made of two bits of very flexible wood fixed one on the other so as to fit exactly ; these vibrate as the air from the lungs passes through them, and this vibration is com- municated to the column of air in the pipe of the oboe. The result, if the instrument be constructed in accordance with the principles of acoustics, is a true musical sound. vi On the Songs of Birds 127 The figure B represents the musical instrument of a bird. It may be a Book's, or it may be a Nightin- gale's; there is no difference in the make of the instrument, and the difference in the voice depends simply on the size of the instrument and the skill of the performer. The sound is produced in the same way by all our songsters, and on the same principle as in the oboe. The bird breathes from its lungs into two bronchial tubes ; at the point where these two tubes combine into one there is fixed a tiny elastic membrane, 1 which serves the same purpose as a reed, and sets the air vibrating in the pipe which corresponds to the pipe in the oboe, i.e. the bird's windpipe. We are apt to fancy that the bird sings with his bill or his tongue, but this is altogether a mistake. It is possible that these may have some kind of influence upon the sound, but that sound is produced far down in the bird's throat, at the thin end of the tube, just as it is in the oboe. The two instruments are thus really alike; yet there is a difference, not only in the material of which they are made, but in the way in which they are used. Or, to put it another way, the difference of material makes it inevitable that the methods of playing upon them should also be different. In the oboe the tube is of wood, and therefore hard and inelastic ; of itself it cannot alter the pitch of the 1 See Appendix and plate at end of volume. I 2 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. sound produced by it. But in order to alter the pitch, holes have been punched in the tube, by stopping which with the fingers you can make the vibrating column of air in the tube longer or shorter at will, and thereby alter the pitch of the sound ; just as in the trombone the same thing is effected by moving one tube up and down within the other. But in B, the bird's instrument, the tube is not hard or stiff; it is as elastic as the body of a worm, and is indeed not unlike that curious compound of rings. It can be lengthened and shortened, squeezed and relaxed, by the many strong muscles which are attached to it; and these give the bird a capacity, whether or no he choose to take advantage of it, of producing an almost endless variety of pitch. Some birds when in full song, the Nightingale for example, will draw their throats in and out, while at the same time the feathers are set quivering with the vibration going on within. These motions are caused by the lengthening and shortening of the tube, while 'at the same time the whole instrument is in strong vibra- tion. No wonder then that the sounds produced by such an instrument are, or can be, endless in variety, and often beautiful in tone. But this instrument is a natural and wild one, tmtempered and unfettered by human science or art ; and the sounds it produces are not all of them musical sounds in the true sense, even in the very best bird- vi On the Songs of Birds 129 songs. There is hardly a bird so completely master of its instrument as never to lapse into sounds that are rather noise than music, or, in technical lan- guage, sounds caused by vibrations that are not repeated at exactly equal and very small intervals. And in some very curious " songs," such as those of the Grasshopper Warbler and Wood- wren, which are like the winding of a watch or a fishing-reel, there is really no musical sound at all. Songs we call them, for they are pleasant to the ear, and fully answer the purpose of a song; but they are not sounds which can properly be called musical. But the voices of our best singers, Nightingale, Song-thrush, Blackcap, Blackbird, Robin, Skylark, and others, are for the most part really musical; these play upon instruments which constant use and natural selection has rendered wonderfully pleasing in tone, and the fact that they perform (unlike the boisterous Canary) out of doors, and among many other sounds, prevents the sensitive ear from feeling their wildness too painfully. But in what sense are they music ? We may fairly enough call them musical, but how nearly do they approach to the nature of our highly-developed art ? The question can be answered without much difficulty by any one who has a sufficiently trained ear, and will take the trouble to try and write down in musical notation some of the songs he hears. His K 1 30 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. first task will be to fix, by means of a delicate pitch- pipe, the note on which the bird starts his song, and so, as far as may be possible, to fix the key or tonality of it. But this, though only the initial step, is often extremely difficult to accomplish ; and you can by no means always be sure that, even if there be a real tonality in the strain, it can be determined by making sure of the first note. And when you go further and try to photograph on paper the whole strain or even a part of it, you are confronted with such difficulties as can be overcome by nothing less powerful than a lively imagination. My own attempts of this kind have been signal failures ; but I should not be justified on that account in thinking the task a hopeless one, if I were not wholly unable to appreciate the attempts which others have thought to be successful. To take an example : I have seen the song of the Willow- wren represented by a descending scale of notes from E in the treble to C ten notes below, and I quite understand why this succession of notes is selected. But I wholly deny that the Willow-wren prefers to sing in C major, and I much doubt whether there be in his song one to which I must have listened many thousands of times more than one full tone of our musical scale. 1 This is one of those songs which 1 The notation of this song will be found in Mr. Harting's Birds of Middlesex, p. 58. In the same book is an attempt to reproduce vi On tfie Songs of Birds 131 might seem at first hearing to lend themselves fairly well to notation ; but of others, such as the Nightin- gale's or the Eobin's, I would say without hesitation that any attempt so to represent them would be pure waste of time. A poet can be translated from his own language into another with some show of success ; but to write the song of the Kobin on a musical stave is in my opinion not only to translate him but to traduce him. You may imitate a bird's song, it is true, on some instrument made especially for the purpose ; but that is a very different thing from writing down on music-paper either the song itself or the imitation of it. There is a very plain reason why all such attempts should be futile. The birds use no fixed intervals such as those in our artificial scale ; their voices are wholly free and unfettered by convention, and they can make free use of any of the infinite number of intervals which in reality exist between one of our tones and another. This is simply the result of the nature of the bird's vocal apparatus, of the com- bination of syrinx, windpipe, and muscular system ; the windpipe being so elastic, as I have already the Blackcap's warble, in which I am unable to trace any resem- blance to the song as I know it. Many other curious examples are given in an interesting book called Woodnotes Wild, by S. P. Chancy (Boston, U.S., 1892), together with a useful bibliography of the subject. Mr. Chancy was an ardent lover of birds, and a musician as well ; and I sincerely regret that I am unable to judge of his success in dealing with the songs of American birds. 1 3 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. explained, as to be capable of producing, under the action of the muscles, an infinite number of musical intervals when the column of air in it is set vibrating by the vibrations of the syrinx. It is not often that birds hit upon a succession of even two or three notes which closely correspond to intervals in our scale. The Cuckoo does so, though not often very exactly, and so too does the Song-thrush ; and very careful training may bring some birds to whistle a human tune, at best a melancholy travesty, unworthy alike of man and bird. Once, indeed, I heard a caged Blackbird sing, as I fancied, a beautiful phrase which occurs in the first allegro of Beethoven's Sonata for piano and violin in G- major, No. 10 ; l and I made inquiry, without result, whether the bird had ever had a chance of hearing that beautiful movement. Again, in the music of the older masters, who wrote when music was fresh and young, I seem often to hear the songs of birds. There is a quartet of Mozart's for strings (No. 4 in B flat) which is full of i The phrase is gfc=fcj=FV--* :=: *+"-- . And this is not the only phrase in the movement which reminds me of the Blackbird. The song of the Yellowhammer, which is said to have suggested the famous opening notes of the Symphony in C minor, is also to be caught here and there in the allegretto of the string quartet in F major, Op. 59, No. 1. No one acquainted with the great composer's method and power of developing his themes from trifling origins by constant meditation will be astonished at these apparent coincidences. vi On the Songs of Birds 133 such short, sweet phrases as the best bird -singers delight in ; yet I am disposed to think that the impression thus made on me is one of fancy and association rather than of reality. When, as in the andante of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, the voices of birds are consciously imitated, the effect, though not unpleasing, is not truly artistic ; and we are reconciled to it only because it is immediately followed by a really beautiful phrase, which brings us back at once into the region of true music. I maintain, then, that the songs of birds have no true relation to our music, which is a highly-developed product of science and art combined ; that you can- not write them down on our musical scale without depriving them of all that freedom and wildness in which their very life and beauty consist ; and that they cannot be played upon a highly artistic instru- ment of man's making, though they can be rudely imitated on a rude one. If they are to be compared with anything human, it should rather be with that rude music of primitive man out of which our own has gradually been evolved with the cries of victory, the wailing of women, the weird chant of the prophet- ess, or even the " hwyl " that may still occasionally be heard in Welsh pulpits. Where these have assumed a stereotyped form, as in the last-mentioned case, or in the Greek Psean or Linus-chant, they may perhaps be considered analogous to the songs of such 134 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. birds as have developed a fixed phrase by which to express their emotions. And yet I doubt whether the analogy would be a very sound or useful one. As far as I can judge, there is in the music of the birds neither time nor rhythm nor scale ; and these are the essential and primal elements out of which, together with tonality, our human music has been developed. What can be gained by painful attempts to express the songs of birds in terms of an art which has nothing in common with them except tone ? All efforts, then, on the part of ingenious persons to translate the language of the birds into their own are in my opinion lost labour, and can lead to no increase of our knowledge. But perhaps some one may object that they are no more lost labour than the birds' songs themselves, which may seem to be among those animal utterances which mean little and lead to nothing. Such an argument, how- ever, would be wholly unfounded and unfair, for a bird's song has beyond all question both meaning and value ; and though we cannot always be sure of the purpose it serves, we can at least arrive at some general conclusions on the subject, to be illustrated or corrected by the observation of every day. I will next take a glance at these conclusions with the premise, however, that we are here, as indeed through- out this chapter, dealing with the true songs only, and not with the innumerable call-notes and alarm- vi On the Songs of Birds 135 notes which birds use to communicate with each other. The difficult question whether the true songs have or have not been developed out of these minor utterances I must leave for the present untouched. Since the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species there has been considerable discussion about the origin and meaning of song. In his great work, while developing his theory of sexual selection, the famous naturalist threw out a hint that the vocal powers of male birds might be explained on this hypothesis; and in his Descent of Man he worked out the idea more fully, and supported it by a con- siderable number of facts supplied him by books and correspondents. 1 The theory is, in brief, that the song of the male was developed as a charm to the female in the time of courtship; that the females usually select the best singers among their suitors to be their mates ; and that thus, in the course of ages, the vocal powers have been steadily increased by the process of selection. The most highly-gifted birds are chosen as progenitors, and transmit their powers to their young; while the inferior performers are more likely to remain bachelors, exercising no in- fluence upon the race. The evidence which Darwin brought together in support of this view was by no means very strong. 1 Origin of Species, ed. 1888, vol. i. p. 70 ; Descent of Man, ed. 1, vol. ii. p. 51 foil. 136 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. It was based chiefly on observations made upon birds in captivity a kind of evidence constantly apt to be misleading. It is, in fact, extremely difficult to ob- tain really trustworthy observations as to the court- ing of birds in a wild state ; even if we were to spend whole days in watching them from sunrise to sunset, their restlessness and locomotive power would make it very hard to prove beyond doubt that a given female selects the best singer among her wooers, nor could we feel very confident that the best singer in our judgment is also the best in hers. And Darwin, I think, was well aware of the doubtful character of his evidence; he records what bears against his theory with all his usual candour, and does not really press this part of his argument home. There are, however, two unquestionable facts which sustain his view. In the first place, true song is always a male character ; if female birds sing at all, they sing, so far as seems to be known, a feebler and inferior song, which may be no more than a humble imitation of that of their lords. And secondly, the song of the male is at its best during the breeding season, and in many or most cases is heard at no other time. To these two facts we may add another, less cogent but very interesting, that most of our best singers are very quietly-coloured birds ; the inference here being that where beauty of plumage has not been developed to charm the taste of the females, another vi On the Songs of Birds 137 charm has been substituted in the form of highly- finished vocal power. It is to be noticed that this theory was primarily meant to account for the origin of song in birds, rather than its present meaning and use. I doubt whether Darwin himself would have maintained that all birds' songs are love-songs, or, as some less cautious writers will have it, that they are inspired only by feelings of rivalry and hatred towards other per- formers. It is, indeed, almost impossible for any one who lives all the year round among birds to accept the theory as an adequate explanation of song as it is now used by many species ; and I should doubt whether it supplies us even with a sufficient reason for the primeval origin of song. With all my rever- ence for the great naturalist, I can hardly persuade myself that his view is here entirely in keeping with the general tenor of animal life, of which the force and spontaneity and enjoyment are surely not all derived from one set of emotions. In any case the field -naturalist must find himself continually con- fronted with facts which will raise questions in his mind about the theory of sexual selection, even if he should be unacquainted with the criticism to which it has already been subjected by eminent men of science. While writing these pages in the country I have many a time gone out for a stroll and heard the 138 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. voices of several species of birds long after the natural period of pairing and nesting was past. Some of these birds, it may be argued, were having late broods ; eggs may be found even in August. But a little watching will generally show whether this is so or not ; and I am confident that it was not so with most of the birds I listened to. The most persistent of these is the Yellowhammer, who will go on singing throughout the summer, associating his monotonous strain with the sultriness of the unchanging August days. Yesterday it happened to me to drive some twenty miles through the country between Oxford and the Chilterns ; and I may honestly say that on that last day of July there was a Yellowhammer singing in every hundred yards of open country through which I passed. What can be the meaning of such persistence? Are these birds looking back regretfully to the happy courtships of last spring, or hopefully looking forward to fresh happiness in the spring to come ? Or are they practising, as Darwin imagined, practising with a view to outdo their rivals next pairing season? Surely this would compel us to assume that the mind of the bird, from February to September or later, is wholly occupied with thoughts of matrimony. To me it seems much more probable that when the young are grown up such thoughts are no longer in the mind of the parent bird, and that their place is vi On the Songs of Birds 139 taken by the immediate necessities and comforts of life the abundance of food, and the gratifying warmth of the summer until the time of moult. Persistence in singing long after the breeding season is noticeable in some other birds, and is especially well known in the case of the Eobin. The Common Wren, the Thrush, the Hedge-sparrow, the Chaffinch, the Great Tit, and a near relation of the Yellowhammer, the Corn-Bunting, will also sing the greater part of the year, the first three in every month from January to December. Let us notice, by the way, that these are all extremely hardy birds, which stay with us throughout the year, and rarely, in our moist and fertile country, find themselves without abundance of food : for it may, I think, be taken as a good rule, that of singing birds those which are the hardiest and most easily supplied with food are the most persistent, if not always the best songsters. Let us note one or two facts about two of these, the Eobin and the Chaffinch. The Kobin, indefatig- able singer as he is, is not to be heard or very rarely in July and the early part of August. Seldom indeed will you see him at this time, unless you happen to be prying after some plant or insect in a wood, where you may surprise him in a forlorn state of moult, very indignant at being discovered in such a predicament. But no sooner is 1 40 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. the moult well over than he is on the move again, and again in song. And that autumn song is to me always peculiarly sweet and eloquent. It is the natural outpouring, I think, of high spirits and happiness, after a period of illness and change has been successfully passed. Sometimes it is accompanied with signs of love and courtship, and in a warm season these occasionally result in fresh pairing, and even in a nest and eggs. But I cannot believe that all the singing is here love-making ; nor yet to be explained by animosity towards other males. I look on both singing and courting as equally flowing from the same cause viz. renewed health and spirits and enjoyment. I remember once at Knaresborough, and again in Nidderdale three years ago, in fine weather, finding every garden and hedge echoing with the songs of Eobins the first day or two of October ; had all those songs meant love-making or quarrelling, I must have seen something more of it than I did. And they could hardly have meant mere practising ; if constant listening to birds' voices can give one any idea of their meaning, then I think I have a right to say that those Eobins were singing from pure enjoyment of the autumn sunshine, of the abundance of food and moisture, of fresh access of bodily health and comfort. The song of the Chaffinch is familiar to every one whose mind has ever been occupied with these things. vi On the Songs of Birds 141 No bird insists on repeating the same phrase so constantly; and if its only object is to charm the hearts of the females, the hen Chaffinches must have a truly marvellous faculty for never-ending ad- miration of the commonplace. The males begin to practise their one phrase early in February, or even sooner; and ludicrous indeed are the efforts they make. These are partly, perhaps, the younger birds picking up the song from memory, partly the older ones whose strength is still hardly equal to the whole of it. Tor to sing is a great effort to a bird not in perfect condition, and even in the height of their spring vitality it is no small task for many of the slighter-built ; it cannot be properly done when the bird is ill, or moulting, or underfed. And the Chaffinch, lusty as he is, even in the winter, is not equal to the strain until the sun has warmed him and brought him better food. I have known him sit on a bough by the hour together, hammering away at his song and tumbling over it in his clumsy efforts; but in two or three days he will usually have got it perfect. When once this industrious practiser has accom- plished it even to the last " twee-o," he is never weary of it. Few persons know how extraordinary his persistence is; had Darwin known, I doubt if he could have accounted for it either as practice, or as courting or rivalry. Both in England and on the 142 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. Continent I have counted the number of times this bird will sing his stereotyped song in one minute, and have always found it the same, viz. between six and seven times. Assuming that he begins at daybreak, he should sing it some five thousand times over in one day ; and one fine morning last June I heard him begin it actually before sunrise. I might mention other examples of the same indefatigable activity among our common song-birds, notably in the Skylark, which can hardly be accounted for by the theory of sexual selection ; but I must turn to some other facts bearing on the same question. Some birds delight in social gatherings, and in these, where there can be no thought of pairing or nesting, their excitement is expressed either by singing or some other kind of loud utterance. It is not often what may be called the true song of the bird, but it is certainly a vocal effort of the same kind, and deserves to be considered under the same head. These social gatherings will take place even in the breeding season ; generally in the evenings after work is over, and when recreation is possible before sunset and roosting. Last June I used to watch and listen at a certain large osier-bed, in which a rare and interesting bird had then taken up its abode ; and every evening the other birds seemed to be quite put to silence by the incessant singing, vi On the Songs of Birds 143 not mere twittering, but real singing, of some dozens of Swallows, which were careering about, now over the osiers, now far up in the air, the song now distant, now close at hand, until about nine o'clock they all suddenly dropped down into the osiers and were silent. That singing meant pure enjoyment of life nothing more. The Swifts, again, birds without true song, use their voices in this same way. Every one has seen and heard them dashing in little companies round the towers in which they build, and screaming with an intensity of enjoyment which quite communicates itself to the human looker-on. Eooks, as we all know, have mysterious habits, social and noisy, of the same kind. Even our unpoetical Sparrow, whose efforts at singing are of the meanest, will indulge of an evening in a sort of music-hall chorus, in which every bird chatters as loud as he can; hundreds taking possession of some favourite holly-tree or thick creeper, and joining in a discordant chorus just before roosting time. These last two instances, it may be said, are not really cases of true song, though they are the substitute for it in birds which have their vocal organs developed but neglected. But I can quote a most remarkable example of real singing in company, without any reference to courting or rivalry. There is a large bird of the South American pampas, known 144 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. to most of us in the London Zoological Gardens, for we hear his voice resounding over Kegent's Park long before we reach the Gardens and find that he is the Crested Screamer. Mr. Hudson, in his Naturalist in La Plata, has a most interesting chapter on this bird, whose screaming, he tells us, is in its native country a powerful and magnificent song. These birds often sing all together in vast flocks at certain intervals during the night. Mr. Hudson describes an awful and overpowering burst of " melody " which saluted him from half a million of voices at an out- of-the-way spot in the pampas one evening at nine o'clock ; and again how once at noon he heard flock after flock take up their song round the entire circuit of a certain lake, each flock waiting its turn to sing, and duly stopping when the duty had been performed. It is indeed difficult to imagine that the voice of the birds in the Gardens could ever be the vehicle of real song ; but Mr. Hudson's account is explicit. There are one or two other little facts which I must notice before I leave this part of the subject. Let us consider for a moment the singing of our Warblers delicate birds which do not sing all the year or most of it, as do the Eobin and the hardy ones I mentioned before. Here, if anywhere, we might expect to find the song exclusively used in the pairing time. Yet it is not so ; the males arrive in this country some days before the females, and if it vi On the Songs of Birds 145 is warm and the sun shines, they will begin to sing at once ; if it is cold and dreary, they will wait. You may hear a Nightingale or a Blackcap singing heartily but quite alone, not another bird of the species within half a mile of him. Such a solitary Nightingale sings in the parks at Oxford every spring. This may indeed be practice ; and it further serves the purpose of attracting a mate, and as a rule succeeds : it may also attract other males, and then there is rivalry and perhaps fighting. But when the pairing is over, the singing goes on with almost as much vigour as before ; and it is then used to divert and please the hen during the labours of nest-building and incubation, and also, no doubt, to keep her aware of his being close at hand. In one particular species, the Wood Warbler, it is especially delightful to watch the communications which pass between the male and female during the nesting time. As was pointed out to me by a most exact observer, the real song is then only uttered when the hen bird is on the nest : when she is off, its place is taken by a long-drawn call-note, far more beautiful in tone than the song itself; and the hen herself responds in notes similar in tone, but somewhat shorter and quicker. And I have read a curious statement by a good observer of the early part of this century, that the male Blackcap will sing even while taking his turn at sitting on the eggs, still keeping L 1 46 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. touch with his mate in this sweet and tender utter- ance. And indeed in my opinion song may be made to serve any useful purpose, according to the conditions in which a bird finds itself. It may even be an expression of anger at some intrusion or calamity. It is well known that you may make a Sedge Warbler sing by poking a stick or throwing a stone into the bush in which he happens to be. I have even known this bird sing vociferously its regular song, though somewhat loudly and harshly, while one of its young brood was being killed close by; for, unknown to me, my dog had seized this tender fledgling, and it was not till I discovered this that I discerned the meaning of the song. I have some reason to think that the Nightingale's song, which is of the same highly emotional type, is also sometimes used in this way ; for Mr. Playne tells me that he has known a Nightingale sing loudly in a tree overhead while he was examining its nest in the undergrowth below. Again, while staying at a house near Newbury, I was taken by my host to see a Wren's nest in the thatched roof of a summer- house, and was told that I should hear the cock bird sing immediately after every visit to the young with food. We sat some time in the arbour, and I found the account perfectly accurate. The female fed her young silently ; but no sooner had the male left the nest than he uttered a distinct song, a somewhat vi On the Songs of Birds 147 abbreviated edition of the strain we know so well. The object may have been to let his wife know that he had done his duty and that it was her turn next, or it may have been merely his way of expressing his own satisfaction with himself and his lot ; but it had beyond doubt a meaning, and one in no way connected with courtship. It is time I should sum up what I have been saying about the nature and objects of songs. I am inclined to think that in this particular instance Darwin was not in possession of a sufficient amount of evidence, and that his theory of sexual selection cannot by itself account for all we know about the singing of birds. Wallace, whose experience of living animals was larger, and perhaps more truly sympathetic, takes a different view. 1 If I under- stand him rightly, he thinks that song is really only " an outlet for superabundant nervous energy," which natural selection has intensified and differentiated as being useful in many ways, among which we must certainly reckon the courting of the females by the males. Where vitality is not expended in producing brilliant colour in one or both sexes, it has been spent in producing brilliant song of a particular type and tone. This theory seems to me to account for the facts better than the other. It is in the main the same conclusion at which Mr. Hudson arrived in the 1 A. R. Wallace, Darwinism, p. 284. 148 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. work I have already quoted. Having spent a great part of his life among living creatures on the pampas of La Plata, Mr. Hudson believes that singing and the other performances which he describes so well in his remarkable chapter on " Music and Dancing in Nature" are not the result of sexual selection, but are rather a perfectly spontaneous expression of delight or comfort, such as we may all feel at times, especially when we are young and have no great anxieties. The marvel of the best songs of birds is, indeed, their exquisite beauty and finish, and the steady adherence of one species to a particular typical strain. It seems to be otherwise with creatures that cannot fly. I have known young men whose animal spirits seemed to force them to make a noise even to howl and scream for no particular reason. So too with other creatures that walk upon the earth ; they low and bellow, and neigh and roar, in tones which are wholly inarticulate. But the birds are freer, sprightlier, brighter in their whole life ; their freedom and swiftness enable them to find food, water, and sunshine wherever they will; and this happier and keener life has in some of them developed a choice and beautiful way of giving vent to their joy. They have almost invented a language : their voices are not really inarticulate. Each species has its own tongue, in which the sexes dally and converse and communicate with each other ; and vi On the Songs of Birds 149 this tongue is as a rule a beautiful one, because the life of the birds is itself beautiful not only for the short time of courting, but beautiful and free all the year. It is the joyful life of the birds that has made their songs so grateful to us. Let us now turn for a moment to yet another question. How do birds learn the peculiar songs and call -notes of their species, so that generation after generation keeps them up with little or no modification ? This is a question on which our great naturalists seem to be fairly well agreed ; 1 but the evidence cannot be said to be very extensive or complete, except for caged birds, and it is curious that most of the experiments that have been made with these date as far back as the last century. Daines Barrington, the friend of Gilbert White, the same man who a few years earlier had reported to the Eoyal Society on the extraordinary natural gift of a great human musician, then the child Mozart, recorded in 1773 a number of experiments with young birds ; and his notes form the staple of the evidence used both by Darwin and Wallace. He came very decidedly to the conclusion that birds learn their song ~by imitating their parents' voice; and that if you take them early from the nest, and place them near other birds, they will imitate these instead. If you put them to school with a single 1 Wallace, Natural Selection (ed. 1891), p. 104. 150 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. bird, they will acquire that ' bird's song, and if with birds of two or three different species, their song will probably be a mixture. But when once a lesson is thoroughly learnt, it seems to be rarely forgotten : they will not desert one song and take up another, however often they may hear it. These experiments of Barrington's, and some others also, do undoubtedly prove that even if birds have an hereditary tendency to sing the song of their own species, it may be easily overcome, and bent in another direction, by placing them within hearing of the songs of other birds. But I cannot help thinking that the subject needs more careful investigation, and that there are difficulties which are not yet cleared up. For example, how does the young Cuckoo learn the note of his own species ? He is brought up in an alien nest, and hears the song and the alarm-notes of his foster-parents. Some say that the parent Cuckoo continues to feed the young bird, and haunts the nest for some time, though that has not been the case within my own experience. If that be so, it might be argued that the young Cuckoo, whose voice organ is not, I suppose, suited to produce the notes of a Tree-pipit or Wagtail or Dunnock, naturally imitates the voice of its true parent. But there is again a difficulty: by the time the young bird is hatched, the old Cuckoos are rarely heard, and have in any case lost the true intonation of their song. vi On the Songs of Birds I 5 I And why should it not equally well imitate the cawing of Eooks overhead, or the cooing of Wood-pigeons, and any other notes of full- voiced birds to be heard round about ? How is it to recognise and imitate, among all these, the voice of its true parent ? And I might put another case of this kind, to show that the difficulty is a real one. Suppose a Nightingale has a nest at the roots of a tree ; when the young are hatched the cock bird ceases to sing, and devotes himself to feeding them. Now, there may well be a Willow Warbler, a Blackcap, or a Garden Warbler still in full song hard by, it may be in the very same tree : why then do not the young Nightingales learn the song which is thus poured into their ears all day ? We might at any rate sometimes expect to hear wild birds with a mixture of song, derived from those of other species ; and yet, in the great majority of birds at least, the song is fixed, stereotyped as it were, and only alters here and there dialectically, not by the reproduction of the songs of other birds. These are difficulties which make me hesitate to accept too readily the theory that the songs are acquired simply by imitation of the parent. Of course if we could take a nestling from the nest before he has heard the parent sing, if we could keep him away from all birds' voices, and if we then found that he adhered to the parental song, or, on the other hand, if we found that he could not sing at all, 152 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. the problem would be solved. But this experiment would, I think, be as impracticable as the one which Herodotus ascribes to the king of Egypt who shut away two infants from all voices, to see what language they would speak. The nearest approach to such a case that I have met with is recorded by Mr. Hudson. He tells us that he once observed a tame Tinamou (a bird of the pampas) which had been taken from its parents just as it had issued from its egg, and which was still only half-grown, yet sang the song of its own species perfectly for an hour together every evening. With large birds of this kind the experiment is possible, because they can run about and feed themselves directly they break their shell ; but the young of our song-birds cannot do so, and it would be almost hopeless to try and keep them alive out of the nest when only a day or two old. All that I am contending for is that there must be an inherited tendency in birds to learn easily the songs of their parents. That they do readily imitate, and even that they are, in some cases, carefully in- structed, I can hardly venture to doubt. Not long ago a lady wrote to me from Kome a very explicit and apparently truthful account of a lesson given by an old Nightingale to a young bird, at which she had herself been present. She said that the teacher repeated each phrase until the pupil had it perfect. 1 1 See below, p. 189. vi On the Songs of Birds 153 Curiously enough, the idea that the Nightingale teaches its young to sing is as old as Aristotle. He says in his Natural History that this bird "seems to instruct her young ones, and to repeat to them certain passages for their imitation, as the language does not come naturally in the same manner as the voice, but must be acquired by exercise and study." And once more we have a capital instance from Mr. Hudson of the pains which young birds will take to acquire their song. He says that the young of the Oven-bird, when only partially fledged, are often heard practising in the nest or oven the curious duets which the parents are in the habit of singing together. This goes on while the old birds are absent ; " single measured notes, triplets, and long concluding trills are all repeated with wonderful fidelity." While we are upon the subject of imitation, I should like to say a word about that very curious phenomenon in a few birds the intentional and im- pudent appropriation of the notes and songs of others. I do not know that I can explain this, but I can at any rate give a good example of it. We have all heard of Mocking-birds, but few of us probably have heard the feat accomplished to perfection. We have one or two common birds in England which attempt it the Starling, for example, and the Sedge Warbler. This last little bird is clever at mimicking, in the course of his incessant rattling I 5 4 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. song, the call-notes of certain species which are always in his neighbourhood e.g. the Chaffinch, and the Pied and Yellow Wagtails. He is often said to go further than this, and to reproduce complete songs ; but this I have never heard, though I have lis- tened to thousands of Sedge Warblers. But the Marsh Warbler, whose performances I have described in another chapter, is probably as skilful a mimic as any bird in the world. I have many times listened by the half-hour together to his wonderful and amus- ing song, which has quite an individuality of its own, and is of the same general type as the Nightingale's ; but a great part of it is taken up with most unmis- takable and sometimes quite ludicrous robbery of other birds' strains, so that I, who had always been a little sceptical about the accounts of mocking-birds, became at once and for ever convinced. It is hard to say why this particular species, and so few others, should have taken up with this thievish propensity. Why is it that its near rela- tion the Eeed Warbler, a bird in outward appearance almost exactly like it, should lead a perfectly sober life, and steadily recognise the difference between meum and tuum ? The only suggestion I can make is, that of the two the Marsh Warbler is far the more vivacious, restless, and apparently full of fun ; and that, while the Eeed Warbler represents the con- servative element which is so strong in bird-life the vi On the Songs of Birds 155 leading principle, one might say, of a bird's mind, the Marsh Warbler is the radical in the genus Ac.ro- cephalus, with an irresistible desire to push into fresh experiments and innovations in song, and to appro- priate freely the gifts and inventions of his neigh- bours. Or, in sober language, the nervous intensity of some birds is certainly greater than in others ; and these are often the most vivacious singers. If they have developed no very definite form of song for themselves, it may be that their excitability leads them to imitate others. And as it is really from the mental constitution of our own species that we can learn most about that of animals, it may not be out of place to remark that it is exactly the brightest, quickest, most fun-loving among human beings who are most prone to imitation and caricature. While I am on this subject of mimicry in song, it may not be amiss to advert for a moment to a theory lately propounded in the Zoologist, 1 which would ex- plain all songs as imitations, either of the utterances of other birds, or of inarticulate sounds which are constantly obtruded on the bird's ear. The writer of these articles has made a most painstaking analysis of many of the best-known songs ; his perseverance is admirable, and it is only in his conclusions that he seems to have let his fancy run away with him. He suggests, for example, that the Song-thrush began 1 For 1890, pp. 233 foil I 5 6 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. by imitating the sound made when a snail-shell is being broken against a stone; from this humble beginning, used perhaps as an invitation to others to come and feast on snails, it has gradually developed its splendid song. The Swallow's note resembles the sound made by the breaking of the wing-cases of beetles; the harsh tones of the Rails suggest the crushing of the tender shells on which they partly subsist. But one Kail, the Corncrake, has a still stranger origin assigned for its familiar double crake : it took a fancy to imitate the noise made by a cow in browsing, whose big rough tongue rasps up the grass, first on one side of the mouth and then on the other, producing a kind of rhythmical cadence. The Starling's " whining " sounds are like the noise made when a bird pulls a large worm out of the ground. The Wood-wren's song reminds this writer of the sound caused by the two branches of a tree rubbing against each other. The Kobin's song is like the gurgling of water, says Mr. Witchell; and adds, " The Eobin is frequently found near water " ! 1 Surely it is hopeless to try to discover the ulti- mate origin of individual songs. It is little or no good to publish mere guesses which cannot possibly 1 See also an interesting paper on " Bird Song and its Scientific Value," in the Proceedings of the Cotteswold Field Club, which Mr. Witchell kindly sent me. I so fully appreciate the value of his observations and records, that I much regret having to differ from the conclusions he has based on them. vi On the Songs of Birds 157 recommend themselves to the judgment of cautious inquirers. It would be more possible, and on the whole more useful, to examine a single group of closely -allied songs, with the object of finding in them some common ancestral element an archetypal song, the character of which has survived throughout the genus, while particular species have been gradu- ally varying and modifying it. As song is without doubt a valuable specific character, it might surely be worth while to trace its relation, as well as that of plumage and structure, to the generic characters of the whole group. Take, for example, the songs of the Buntings ; they all resemble each other very closely those at least with which I am personally acquainted. They consist of a quick succession of notes, varying slightly in tone and pitch with dif- ferent species, and possibly developed from a primi- tive sound indicating invitation or alarm ; but one or two species have added to these quick notes others which are longer and more musical, and which trans- form the utterance into something more like a musical phrase. The Yellowhammer has done this with one note, the Eeed Bunting with several, the Corn Bunting with a melancholy wheeze, which may some day grow into a pleasant sound ; but the Girl Bunting and the Meadow Bunting (Emleriza Cia) have added nothing to the quick notes as yet, and seem rather to have devoted themselves to improv- 158 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. ing the tone of these, than to inventing new ones to add to them. I am tempted to pursue this subject, but it is a difficult one, not only to investigate, but to deal with on paper in any shape. I will be content with one remark and one illustration. It has often struck me as strange that the songs of closely -allied species should in many cases be so very different from each other those, for example, of the Willow-wren and Chiffchaff, or of the Common and Lesser White- throats. Yet close and attentive listening has in some cases convinced me that there is really a common element, which might easily be missed by a chance hearer. The song of the Common White- throat is a kind of lively and rather jerky warble, while that of the Lesser Whitethroat is a succession of loud resonant notes, all of exactly the same high pitch ; the two songs, in fact, appear to be as specifi- cally distinct as they can well be. But place yourself quietly under a tree in which the lesser bird is singing in May, and you will hear a subdued introduction to that series of loud notes, which to my ear is the same in character as the song of the larger species. If I am not mistaken, this is a survival or reminiscence of the generic Whitethroat song, to which this species has appended a striking musical invention of its own. It still needs a considerable effort to produce this new music, and the effort is not invariably successful. vi On the Songs of Birds 159 One cold and rainy day last May I had proof positive of this. There is a spot in the parks at Oxford where this bird settles himself every spring, and sings with all his might every fine morning. That day, in the usual place, I heard what for the moment I took to be the warble of the other species ; but after hearing it again I began to doubt my own conclusion. In another minute the song was repeated, with two or three of the familiar loud notes following it ; but the effort was too great, and the little bird collapsed be- fore he had completed the performance. The weather was against him, and his heart was not in the work. I may add that I have even heard the Willow-wren begin his song in a manner that strongly reminded me of the Chiffchaff; this was just after his first arrival in spring, when he was perhaps still suffering from the fatigues of the journey. The song of this bird, like that of the Chaffinch, increases greatly in power as the days grow warmer. One word more before I close this chapter. My readers may possibly care to know which songs have affected me most during the many years since I first learnt to distinguish them. It is, indeed, hardly pos- sible to dissociate a bird's song from its surroundings ; and the Eobin in November, the Blackbird in Feb- ruary, the Dipper by a trout-stream, or the ChiffchafFs ringing notes in March, all have a special charm of their own which is not derived solely from the melody 1 60 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. of the bird. But, apart from such associations, I should unhesitatingly endorse the general verdict of mankind, and place the Nightingale at the head of all songsters. There are, indeed, Nightingales and Nightingales ; but when I listen, whether by day or night, to a grand singer in the height of his powers, with his heart full and his health perfect, I feel a sense of wonder, nay of awe, with which no other bird inspires me. That long sweet crescendo, unique among all birds, that liquid trill of marvellous sweet- ness, that swift and sudden cadence, followed by a long mysterious pause what a mind, what a love of art one might almost say, must a creature have who can invent and delight in such sounds, such startling effects as these ! The Eobin is one of our most beautiful singers, and in point of variety I doubt if any bird can rival him ; but when- I once heard a Eobin try his song in a tree above a thicket where a Nightingale was singing, his whole tone paled before the fire and intensity of the master, and he seemed to recognise it himself, for he almost immediately departed. Next to the Nightingale many would place the Blackcap ; and the music of his song, if he is at his best, is wonderfully sweet and pure, though he never gets beyond one simple form of strain. But in splendour at least of performance, I am inclined to place the Skylark second. Fully to appreciate the vi On the Songs of Birds 161 wonderful powers of this bird, you must watch him from his first leaving the ground, on a sunny morning, and follow him up into his "privacy of glorious light," abstracting your mind from every other sound, and gathering in the full force and sweetness of that incessant strain. There are many strident notes in it, but the higher he rises the softer will it fall upon the ear, while every note still remains as clear and resonant as it was at first. Hardly less delightful, though far less familiar, is the song of the Woodlark. Earely indeed does it happen to me now to catch the voice of a bird un- known to me ; and I am not likely to forget how I was saluted, while strolling in the garden of a Welsh farmhouse in the early morning of the 30th of March this year, by a clear and liquid song repeated at short intervals from a tree hard by. For a moment it reminded me of the Great Tit ; but other strains followed, which I might compare to those of the Skylark, the Nightingale, and the Lesser Whitethroat. As I grew accustomed to the song, which was re- peated daily while I stayed there, I fully recognised its individuality, and should hesitate to describe it as imitative. It was a song to refresh and invigorate you; and the performance suited well with the freshness of early morning among the hills, and with the murmur of the trout-stream beyond the meadow. There are yet three singers, each of whom might M 1 62 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP, vi well be placed first for some special gift of tone or expression. The Blackbird is unrivalled in beauty of tone, but he has never learnt to use his instru- ment with perfect finish ; he seems to be constantly practising, as I have always fancied, and as Mr. Burroughs too remarked when he first made acquaint- ance with our English birds ; but perhaps we love him all the better because those native woodnotes are so artless. The Song-thrush is a finer artist a brave and spirited performer on an instrument of noble quality. And the Eobin, with his peculiar tender pathos so at least it seems to us, is also the great master of variety; listen to him intently for a quarter of an hour, and you shall hardly hear the same phrase twice over. With these one other common bird deserves to be classed that gentle and graceful Tree-pipit of whose song I never tire ; and then we have a dozen others to all of whom we may be duly grateful, though none of them, in force, in richness of tone, or in profuseness and variety of strain, can altogether rival those I have selected as being in my judgment the true kings of song. CHAPTEE VII ALL associations, all universities for example, and all colleges and schools, from time to time perform the welcome duty of celebrating the memory of their founders and benefactors : a duty to which it is all the more important to attend, because we are all of us so liable to forget the debt we owe to those who have spent their labour or their wealth to make us what we are. We are obliged to spur our memories from time to time by these wholesome ceremonies, to save ourselves from forgetting how our association came into existence, and to whom it owes its life and all its successful work. I am going to speak this evening of one who may not inaptly be described as the founder and the benefactor of all Natural History Societies. It is a bold step to take, for I shall have to carry you back to a period more than three hundred years before 1 A lecture given to the Natural History Society of Maiiborough College, November 1887. 1 64 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. the birth of Christ, and to writings which are by no means easy to deal with in the limited space of an hour. But I am tempted to try the experiment, for a great part of what Aristotle wrote about natural history is still extant sufficient at least to show us not only that he was the first naturalist of whom we have any record, but that he was a really great naturalist, with far-reaching views of the whole sub- ject, and with infinite perseverance and curiosity in collecting facts and details. His defects are, indeed, obvious enough; we can see that he did not care, or had not time, to sift the evidence for many facts reported to him, and that he mixes up fact and fiction in a very bewildering way. But if we try and judge him, not by our own standard of knowledge and criticism, but by that of an age when what we call science was hardly yet born, we shall revere him as the first man who set himself to collect the facts of animal life, and to explain them so far as he was able. It must be allowed, indeed, that his influence on the study of natural history in the ages that followed him was not entirely a wholesome one. So great was the power which his vast learning, his exactness, and his evident conscientiousness exercised on the minds of men for eighteen centuries, that naturalists if I may use the word of them were content to follow him alike where he was right and VII Aristotle on Birds 165 where jie was wrong ; and during all those centuries hardly any progress was made in our knowledge of the world of plants and animals. No one thought of making a fresh start by using his own eyes and collecting his materials independently of all books. Even the great Pliny is no exception to this rule in his zoological studies ; it is told of him that he once scolded his nephew for taking a walk when he might have used the precious time for reading. All through the middle ages we seek in vain for a true naturalist ; it is only when the revival of learning and the reformation of the church had freed men's minds from the tyranny of books and traditions, that at last we find such men as Gilbert and Bacon and Galileo beginning to interrogate nature for themselves. How incredible it seems to us in these days that not a single monk not one in all those splendid monasteries that swarmed all over England should have been inspired to write such a book as that of Gilbert White ! What -would we not give for an exact record of the plants, the birds, and beasts which were to be found six centuries ago around Fountains, or Kivaulx, or Netley, or Abingdon ! This darkness is in some degree to be attributed to Aristotle, though he himself would have most deeply deplored it. He would have recognised how hope- less it is to abide content with the learning of 1 66 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. previous explorers ; how necessary to be continually testing with your own eyes what others have re- corded in books. He would have delighted in the labours of two such men as our countrymen Eay and Willughby, who in the seventeenth century initiated a new era in the study of plants and animals ; and still more would he have rejoiced in the great comprehensive work of Linnseus in the century which followed, and in the minute and patient observations of White of Selborne. Between Aristotle and Linnseus, a period of more than two thousand years, there was indeed no great and uni- versal naturalist ; and down to the time of Darwin, these are the two greatest names in the history of natural history. Each of them had a definite function to perform. Aristotle gathered together the current knowledge of his day, and added to it largely by dissections and observations; he first directed attention to the facts and mysteries of animal life. Linnseus' work was classification, a task which could not indeed be then adequately performed as we demand it now, but one which had to be performed in some fashion before further advance could be made. To these two men, more perhaps than to any others, we must look back as the founders and benefactors of all Natural History Societies. Aristotle lived in an age when thinking men VII Aristotle on Birds 167 and thinking men were then almost entirely Greeks were beginning to feel what we now call the scientific spirit ; that is, the desire to know exactly what happens and exists in this world of ours, and why it is so. The Greeks, in whose prose and poetry we chiefly delight, nearly all of them lived and died before Aristotle ; they belong, not to the age of scientific inquiry, but rather to an age of art, and faith, and fancy, when men delighted in what they saw around them, and took it all for granted, without troubling themselves with questions about its nature and its cause. Where they did inquire, they inquired in such a vague and general way, that in regard to the secrets of nature they often rather mystified both themselves and their pupils. This was the way of Greek men of intellect down to the middle of the fourth century B.C. ; i.e. down to the time when Philip of Macedon was beginning to build up his mighty power, so soon to overshadow and to overwhelm the bright Hellenic race. The father of this Philip of Macedon had a Greek physician of great repute ; and the son of this doctor, who was therefore much the same age as Philip him- self, was Aristotle. The place where the family lived was a Greek town on the north coast of the ^Egean Sea; and here, with ample opportunity for indulging a boy's love of bird and beast, the young Aristotle lived his early years, helping his father in the surgery and labor- 1 68 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. atory, and destined for the same profession, which is said to have been hereditary in the family. If you look at a good map of Greece, you will see that this little town of Stageirus is placed in a most favourable position for a naturalist. It lies on a sea abounding in fish ; above it rise the wooded heights of the eastern coast of the Chalcidic peninsula on which it stands ; only a few miles distant is the river Strymon, which was so famous for water- and marsh-loving birds, as to give its name as a perpetual epithet to at least one species. Straight across the sea from Egypt and the Soudan came, and still come every spring, multitudinous armies of migrating birds ; they rest awhile about these rivers of the Thracian coast, and then pursue their way northwards, crossing the Balkan Mountains into the plains of the Danube and Eussia, to return again in the autumn. And of course for an inquiring naturalist a seaport town is always a desirable place ; for here come sailors from foreign lands with tales of strange birds and beasts and plants, specimens of which they sometimes bring home with them. We may be sure that the physician, Aristotle's father, made use of the sailors to increase not only his pharmacopoeia, but his knowledge of the world and its contents ; and we may be sure that young Aristotle too was quick to profit by these chances. But a boy with a mind like Aristotle's was not vii Aristotle on Birds 169 likely to be content to remain at home to work the pestle and mortar. He had that wonderful thirst for universal knowledge which seems to be getting rarer as the field of knowledge itself grows wider and more accurately worked. It was only a small part of his ambition to know about plants and animals; he wanted also to know about man, the nature of his mind, his sense of right and wrong, and the way he gathers into states and lives under various forms of government. There was but one city in Greece where studies like these could be effectually followed the city where Plato was teaching, and where every young Greek who really wished to learn was certain sooner or later to find himself. It was when he was about twenty that Aristotle first went to Athens. There he attached himself to Plato's school, caught the spirit of the great master, and began those philosophical works which have more especially made his name immortal. It seems probable that Aristotle wrote the greater part of his book on animals in early life, before he gave himself up to the higher influences of philosophy. But, like all or most of his works, it was not finished and rounded off all at once. He knew very well that a good book on such a subject cannot be turned out in a moment like a table or a chair; it must be continually growing, as additional knowledge comes to its author. Throughout his life, which lasted 170 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. forty-two years after his first arrival at Athens, he was gathering more knowledge and adding it to his book, or correcting, or perhaps striking out. It can be quite plainly seen, from the text as we have it, that additional notes were constantly put in, and that the whole work was never finally completed. We may suppose that the process of completion was going on all the time that he spent chiefly on mental and moral philosophy. Quite in the last years of his life, long after he had been called back to Macedonia to become tutor to the young Alexander the Great, and had seen his pupil mount the throne and depart for his expedition to the East, it is said that he was pro- vided with money by the King for his researches, and that the officers of the Macedonian army were ordered to send him specimens, and to help him in every possible way to carry on his work. 1 We cannot be sure how far this is literally true, and we may be pretty certain that another story, which tells how Aristotle himself went with that famous army to Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, is not to be credited ; but it is quite probable that his old pupil, who loved and reverenced him, at least until the last few months of his life, should have used his unrivalled opportunities to satisfy the old man's unlimited curiosity. The work which thus took a lifetime, in all prob- 1 Plin. N. H., viii. 44. Athenams, 398 e. vii Aristotle on Birds 171 ability, to put together, consists of nine books. The first is about animals in general, their habits of life, food, and so on ; and here man is treated of just like the rest of the animals. The second is about the outward structure of animals containing blood. The third deals with their minuter parts, the tendons, fibres, hair, veins, etc. The fourth treats of the organs of Crustacea, echini, etc., about which the author is extraordinarily well informed, and also about insects. The three next books work out more fully the same subject the organs of various kinds of animals and it is only when we come to the last two (the eighth and ninth) that we begin to find what we in these days call natural history proper, i.e. some account of the ways of life, the different kinds, the various affections, the instincts and reasoning powers, of bird, beast, and fish. These two books are, therefore, those from which I shall chiefly draw what I have to tell you to-night. It would, indeed, have been almost impossible for any one at that time to have written a real natural history of any class of animals, for at least one very good reason : classification, scientific names and terminology were unknown. And here we have an excellent opportunity of learning a lesson about the necessity of scientific names, and of realising the advantage we enjoy in having this already accom- plished for us. Try to put yourselves in the position 1 7 2 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. of a man who, like Aristotle, wished to deal with all kinds of animals, yet had no means of distinguishing them, except the common names which country folk had given them. Of course there were many rare or out-of-the-way species which had no names at all; and thus we find Aristotle often obliged to describe them as best he could without a name at all. Then remember that one name is not enough to enable us to be sure of the particular kind meant. It is only since the universal application by Linnaeus of the principle of the double Latin name that we have been enabled to know with tolerable certainty what species is referred to by a writer ; and even now the difficulty is often so great that it has lately been pro- posed to adopt, in certain cases, a system of three names. Let us consider this point for a moment, in order to understand the chief difficulty that Aristotle had to contend with, and to appreciate the curious fact that for two thousand years after his time natural history remained a hopeless chaos. 1 Supposing you wished to find a book in a large library to which there was no catalogue. If the books were arranged in some order the poets to- gether, the historians together, and so on you would 1 To illustrate this confusion I may quote the heading of Willughby's account of the Bar-tailed Godwit (ed. 1678, p. 292) : ' The Godwit, called in some places the Yarwhelp or Yarwip, in others, the Stone Plover. The Barge, or jEgocephalus of Bellonius as I take it. An Fedoa Gesneri ? An Rusticola Aldrovandi ? " vii Aristotle on Birds 173 have a fair chance of finding your book if it were there ; but if there were no such arrangement, you might be wasting your time and temper for half a day before you chanced upon the one you wanted. By far your best chance would be if the books were so ordered that, e.g., one whole case contained poets, and each division of that case contained poets of different kinds, dramatic, lyric, epic, etc., and each shelf in each division contained poets of different languages ; so that if you wanted to find Shakespeare you would look, in the case of poets, in the division for dramatic poets, and in the shelf for English dramatic poets. Since Linnaeus the library, so to speak, of natural history has been ordered and classified in a system something like this. There is a case for birds, there are divisions for the chief orders of birds, and shelves for the minor distinctions of birds, and each case, division, and shelf has its name allotted to it in a language which all the learned world can understand, i.e. Latin ; and for common convenience the names of the divisions and the shelves by which I mean the generic and the specific names, the two most useful working distinctions in dealing with one kind of animal only are taken to denote, to be the full scientific name of, each individual species. Thus just as you say that a book will be found in division A, shelf 6, so you call a bird Fringilla ccelebs, i.e. you mean a bird belonging to the genus 174 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. Fringilla, or Finch, and to the species ccelebs, which all naturalists recognise at onco to mean the Chaffinch. If we had no other name but Chaffinch to give it, it would be hopeless to try and make any one but an Englishman understand what we mean ; and indeed there are millions of English people who would not recognise it by that name. They would probably know the bird if you called it a Twink ; but even then you could not be certain that you had conveyed to them the idea of the right bird, because the country people are apt to call other birds besides the Chaffinch by this very old and favourite name. Now Aristotle was just in the position of a man who wants to tell people what books there are in a great collection, which is scattered in confused piles over the floor of an immense room, without any shelves to arrange the books in. Those shelves, i.e. the names, were not made for another two thousand years ; and it is perhaps doubtful if they could have in any case been easily made without the aid of the Latin language, which was at that time still in a rude and semi -barbarous condition. And I suppose this is partly why Aristotle preferred the study of the physiology of animals to that of their classification and description ; and certainly this is why it is often so very hard for us to follow him when he speaks of individual species. He notes, perhaps, a few par- vii Aristotle on Birds 175 ticulars and habits, but he gives us only the common Greek name ; and in the case of any ordinary little brown bird that has not some striking peculiarity in bill, or tail, or claws, he leaves us, of course, altogether in doubt as to the particular species he means. In fact, I could not possibly have ventured to come and speak to you about him and his birds this evening if a learned ornithologist, the Swedish Professor Sundevall, had not been at the pains to bring to bear on Aristotle his knowledge of Greek, as well as his knowledge of natural history, and so saved me an amount of trouble for which I never could have found time. 1 Let, us now turn to Aristotle's account of the birds ; and in the first place let us see what he says of their numbers and habits. It is surprising at first to find that he mentions no less than 175 different kinds 2 species we can hardly call them with certainty, because the distinction between genus and species was then of course unknown, and old naturalists, just like country folk now, were always liable to confound species together and call them by 1 The Clarendon Press is about to publish a Glossary of Greek Birds, by Prof. Darcy Thompson of Dundee, a scholar as well as a zoologist. As I have been privileged to see some of the proof- sheets of this work, I am able to say that it will contain the most exhaustive treatment of the subject that has as yet appeared. Sundevall's book is Die Thierarten des Aristotles : Stockholm, 1863. 2 So Sundevall : others reduce it to 150 or less. 176 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. one name. Aristotle's 175 would be a most credit- able proportion for an age when an ornithologist had neither gun to shoot with nor field-glass to spy with. In fact it is interesting to conjecture how he can have contrived to make his list so large. By way of explaining this, I will remind you, in the first place, that birds are more obvious to the unassisted eye than any other animals, because they are always moving about, and attracting our attention by their voices ; secondly, that they or at least certain kinds of them have always been of peculiar interest to uneducated people, who imagine them to have some prophetic power, some influence over the fate of human beings. Thus the Eomans were always on the look-out for signs from the birds ; and there are still people who will gravely take off their hats to a Magpie. Those who attend to such things, too, are well aware that the ways of birds are really of some value in warning us of the changes of the weather Swallows fly low, Gulls come inland, Eooks tower, Pigeons fly wildly about, when a storm is approaching. Virgil tells us of such signs in his first Georgic ; and Virgil himself drew much of this Georgic from a Greek poem by Aratus, the subject of which was the signs of the weather : a poem which contains a great deal of curious lore, and shows, as well as the poetry of a much older Greek, Hesiod the Boeotian, that the Greeks as well as vii Aristotle on Birds 177 the Komans were in the habit of attending to the prophetic properties of the birds. Thirdly, we must not forget that, in spite of their reverence for them, neither Greeks nor Romans ever scrupled to eat them, and in fact to eat a much greater variety than we sacrifice to our appetite for game. We learn from Aristophanes' comedy of the Birds that there was a bird market in Athens, just as there is a bird market in modern Rome, " where," says Waterton in his Autobiography, " I often counted over four hundred Thrushes and Blackbirds, above one hundred Robins, with twice as many Larks, and other small birds in vast . profusion." In an Italian book on natural history, drawn up for the use of schools, I found that the part about birds began with a description of the various ways of catching them ! Robins on toast are said to be a favourite dish in Italy. Whether the old Greeks went so far I cannot say ; but at any rate the Greek was an enemy to birds, for Aristophanes makes the chorus in the Birds (which consisted, by the way, of twenty -four different species) sing of man as " An impious race Which was ever one to me Bred in mortal enmity Since it first began to be." And Peisthetserus tells the chorus that N 178 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. " The cunning fowlers for you set Snare and springe, twig, trap, and net, Catch and sell you by the score ; Buyers feel and pinch you sore." J Aristotle, then, had plenty of opportunity of procuring specimens of birds, either alive or dead, during his long stay at Athens, and also of getting information about them from the fowlers who brought them to market. In his description of the habits of the Partridge, for example, not only does he quote the bird-catchers, but it is plain from the account itself that no one but a professional could have supplied him with the information. 2 What, in the next place, does Aristotle tell us of the habits of birds in general ? What, for example, does he tell us about migration, the greatest of ornithological problems? Let me remind you that even Gilbert White only a century ago could not quite persuade himself that some birds do not stay and " lie low " in the winter. Writing in 1*793, he has, he says, " great reason to suppose that the Sand-martins do not leave their wild haunts at all, but are secreted amidst the clefts and caverns of those abrupt cliffs where they usually spend their summers." Now here is a note of Aristotle's on migration, which will 1 Aristoph. Aves, 526 foil. 2 Hist. Anim. ix. 8. The references are to Bekker's edition of 1837. viz Aristotle on Birds 179 show you that he had got at least as far as the sage of Selborne : " All animals have a natural sensitive- ness respecting heat and cold, and like men who seek cold places in the summer and warm places in the winter, so animals, if they can, migrate from place to place. Some are indeed always resident in their accustomed places ; but others migrate, flying from the approaching winter at the autumn equinox, and at the spring equinox returning to the colder countries from dislike of the heat. Some migrate but a short distance, others, e.g. the Cranes, come from the ends of the earth; for these travel from the plains of Scythia (i.e. southern Kussia) to the marshes of Upper Egypt whence the Nile flows (i.e. the Soudan). There the Pigmies are said to dwell ; and this is no fairy-tale, but there is in reality a race of little men and horses who live in holes in the earth. The Pelicans also migrate, and fly from the Strymon to the Danube, where they breed. . . . The fish also migrate, some into the Black Sea and back again, some in the winter from the deep sea to the land, seeking the warmth of the shore, and vice versd. The weaker kinds of birds too descend in winter and frost to the plains for the sake of warmth, and return in the summer. . . . The Wood-pigeon and Stock-dove leave us, and do not winter with us ; and so does the Turtle-dove ; but the Eock-dove stays with us all the winter. The same is the case with the Quail, though 1 80 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. a very few Turtles and Quails may remain behind in sunny spots." He then gives some particulars of the migration of quails, which was well known owing to their excellence as food, as it is still on the Mediter- ranean coasts ; and then goes on to mention many animals which hibernate instead of migrating, e.g. the snakes, snails, and many insects. 1 Then, returning to birds, he proceeds : " Many kinds of birds also hibernate, and they do not all of them go, as some imagine, to warm countries. . . . For many Swallows have been seen in holes almost stripped of feathers, and Kites have been known to come out of such places when they have first shown themselves. The Stork, Blackbird, Turtle-dove, and Lark hide them- selves; and by general agreement the last most of all, for not one is said to have been seen during the winter." 2 Here, though Aristotle was wrong in supposing that any birds hibernate, i.e. lie torpid in winter, it is remarkable to find him telling us that there were some Greeks who were right on this point ; and on the whole his knowledge of the movements of 1 H. A., viii. 12. 2 H. A., viii. 16. The loss of feathers by hibernating birds is asserted by Aristotle more than once : cp. of the Turtle-dove in this same chapter. In Nature, vol. xlv. p. 416, Mr. A. H. Macpherson drew attention to the similarity of these statements and that relating to a captive Cuckoo hibernating in a kitchen, described in Nature, vol. xliv. p. 223. VII Aristotle on Birds 181 birds and fishes is most surprisingly large. And it surely is not wonderful that he and all other old naturalists should have fallen into this error about birds, if we consider that it was but a guess, based on their knowledge of the ways of bats, snakes, and other hibernating creatures. I think it is only fair to Aristotle to compare him in this matter with the best of all our early English ornithologists, Francis Willughby, whose book on birds was edited after his death by his friend Eay, in 1678. He says : " What becomes of Swallows in winter-time, whether they fly into other countries, or lie torpid in hollow trees, neither are most historians agreed, nor can we certainly determine. To us it seems more probable that they fly into hot countries, Egypt, Ethiopia, etc., than that they lurk in hollow trees, or lie in water under the ice in northern countries, as Olaus Magnus reports." And then he quotes Herodotus and Peter Martyr to bear him out. You see that Willughby has good sense, but has not got much further than Aristotle. And it must be allowed that Aristotle does not tell us, as Willughby does, that " a Swallow's nest heals the redness of the eyes, and is good for the bite of a viper " ; nor that one hundred Swallows, with an ounce of castor-oil, and plenty of white wine, are an admirable medicine for the falling sickness. 1 There is another affection to which birds are 1 Willughby 's Ornithology, ed. 1678, pp. 211, 212. 1 82 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. subject the moult. Before we go on to glance at Aristotle's accounts of species, let us see whether he has anything to tell of this. It is not, of course, to be expected that we should find him explaining, as the modern ornithologist does or ought to do, the variations of plumage assumed by birds at different seasons of the year, or at different stages of their existence ; nor does he seem to recognise the moult as a universal law of bird-life. To get so far as this, he would have needed to give his life to ornithology alone, instead of to all the sciences then known to man. Yet he does seem to know that some birds change their plumage at regular times. In the third book of his Natural History he writes : " Birds do not change their colour by age, except the Crane, which becomes darker. But from the change of season, as when it becomes cold, some of those which are of one colour only, black or gray or brown, become white, as the Eaven, the Sparrow, and the Swallows ; but of those which are white none have been noticed becoming black. And, according to the seasons, many birds change their colours, so that they fail to be recognised except by an expert. " J In spite of the strange statements which this passage contains, the last sentence is as true as it can be. Once or twice he alludes to a seasonal change of colour as a well-known fact in some particular 1 H. A. iii. 12. vii Aristotle on Birds 183 species. Of the Sparrow, for example, he remarks : " Some persons say that cock Sparrows only live for one year, and adduce as a proof of this the fact that early in the spring there are no birds with the parts beneath the chin black; but later on the black appears, and leads to the inference that none of the former generation have survived. " x In other cases he was led into strange blunders, which well illustrate the difficulty of making observations in that day, and the danger of accepting as true what is believed by country people. He tells us that two birds, the Greek names for which we may fairly translate by Eedbreast and Eed- start, change the one into the other, the bird being Eedstart in summer and Eedbreast in winter, a delusion probably arising from the fact that the Eedbreast appears in Greece in the winter, after most of the Eedstarts have gone away southwards. 2 He also tells us of two other birds which change into each other in this way, the Black-head and the Fig- bird. 3 We do not know for certain what species he is here alluding to ; but Sundevall thinks he meant the Marsh Tit, which has a black head, and the Pied Flycatcher, which in autumn is not so very unlike the other. Again, he fancied that the Blackbird changed from black to russet in the autumn, * H. A. ix. 7. 10. 2 H. A. ix. 49. B. 4. 3 Ib. 1 84 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. mistaking the dark rusty brown of young birds and females for a changed plumage in all Blackbirds. 1 The Hoopoe, he seems to think, assumes in early spring the feathers of a white hawk; he is here following a very curious and difficult passage of Aeschylus, which he quotes in full. 2 Yet in spite of these delusions Aristotle is careful to tell us that the Cuckoo does not change into a hawk in autumn, as so many people then believed, and believe to this day. 3 I have said enough to show that Aristotle's knowledge of the general facts of the life of birds, though in some points strangely accurate, was on the whole very imperfect. His book was, in fact, a collection of odd bits of unsifted information, so far as it relates to living birds ; his real interest lay rather in investigating the organs of animals by dissection. It is quite true, as Mr. G. H. Lewes remarked long ago, that there is a want of " out-of- doorness " about his book ; it does not smell of the fields and streams ; its author was neither a sportsman nor a field-naturalist. And if we now turn to what he has to tell us of particular kinds of birds, we shall not find many traces of careful observation, though we may light upon some few details that are interesting to naturalists even now. 1 Ib. ix. 49. B. 1. The word I translate "russet" is at>06s. 2 Ib. 9. 8 Ib. vi. 7. 1. vii Aristotle on Birds 185 As I have said, Aristotle makes no real classifica- tion of birds : he does however divide them, for convenience sake, on more than one principle. In his Historia Animalium (viii. 3) he roughly divides them into 1, Flesh- eating birds, with crooked claws, which answer to our Eaptores ; 2, Insect-eating birds, and 3, Seed-eating birds, aKav6o$dom/ceo9, but these were used in Aristotle's time apparently for all shades of vii Aristotle on Birds 191 colours that have red in them, including yellow. There is a word that is generally understood to mean blue, icvdveo? ; but it is hard to tell how many kinds of blue it represents. 1 Aristotle is often con- tent with telling us that a bird is of a bad colour, or a good colour, without troubling himself further, as if he knew well enough that his countrymen were not gifted with an acute colour-sense. We may recognise, however, from his mention of its red or yellow crest, the smallest of European birds, the Gold-crested Wren, which he called by the name of rvpavvos, and describes as being hardly larger than a locust. Its golden crown had already given it the name of "Tyrant," and to this day it retains it in the form of Eegulus or Kinglet. I have never been able to make out why this regal title should also have been conferred upon the Common Wren, which has no crown ; yet not only is this little brown bird known over almost all Europe as King (Hedge-king in Germany, Eoi in France), but the name is as old as the Greeks, for Aristotle says that besides its proper name "Trochilus," it was called " Basileus," and that the Eagle is consequently supposed to be jealous of it. 2 1 Dr. Merry (Rector of Lincoln) tells me that it can include bright blue and all the shades of dark blue that pass into black, and quotes Eustathius (1570, 28), who interprets it as a colour like that of the cloudless sky. 2 H. A. ix. 11. 5. For the Goldcrest, viii. 3. 5. 1 92 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. Among other small birds we recognise the Titmice (avy[6a\oi), of which he says there are three kinds : one as large as a finch, which is no doubt the Great Tit ; one called the Hill Tit, with a long tail, which marks him as a familiar friend of ours ; and one other, a small one, which may be our Marsh Tit, or, as some have thought, the Sombre Tit (Pariis lugubris), a bird now common in Greece, but never found in our islands. 1 Aristotle duly notes the large number of eggs laid by these birds, a fact which is more especially true of the Long -tailed Tit. 2 He also tells that they are enemies to the bees ; 3 and it is a well-known fact that our Blue Tit will sometimes take a fancy to station itself close to a hive and work havoc on the bees as they fly in and out. About the Wagtails, though they are obvious and striking birds, he is not very clear, and we cannot be at all certain under what name he refers to them. In one passage he mentions a number of birds which live by water and move their tails, but that does not carry us very far. 4 Only in one case do we seem to recognise a Wagtail with any certainty, and that is in the description of a bird called Anthus a name 1 H. A. viii. 3. 4. 2 2b. ix. 16. He mentions seventeen and even more than twenty eggs as having been laid by one species, the "Black- headed Tit," by an error perhaps for the Long-tail. 3 Ib. ix. 40. 37. 4 Ib. viii. 3. 13. vii Aristotle on Birds 193 which has been appropriated by ornithologists for the Pipits, birds closely related to the Wagtails. 1 This Anthus lives in the grass, and by streams and marshes, and so far would do very well for a Pipit ; but it is described as being of a fine colour, while all Pipits are brown or gray. I think then that we may follow Sundevall in guessing that it was one of the Yellow Wagtails of which I have said some- thing in another chapter. It is curious, however, that Aristotle should describe this bird as being an enemy to the horse, for the familiar and amicable way in which the Yellow Wagtail will walk about the feet of horses and cattle is known to all of us. But he has many strange mythical statements about the antipathy of one animal for another which we cannot possibly explain ; they are bits of old folk- lore of which the meaning is entirely lost. Passing over some other small birds, such as the Acanthis or Acanthyllis, of which I have written elsewhere, 2 let us see what he has to say of the Cuckoo. I have already mentioned that he discards the fable that the Cuckoo changes into a hawk in the autumn. The hawk which it resembles, he says, disappears about the time when the Cuckoo arrives, and reappears when the Cuckoo departs. If this hawk be the Sparrow-hawk, as we might guess 1 Ib. ix. 1. 22. Sundevall, p. 116. 2 A Year with the Birds, ed. 3, p. 245. 194 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. from its likeness to the Cuckoo, it is true enough that it is a migrant to the south in eastern Europe during the autumn. The hawk, he says also, has hooked claws, which the Cuckoo has not ; nor is the head like that of the hawk, but both feet and head are rather more like those of a pigeon. And he further notes another point which is fairly true, that the colour of the Cuckoo is rather of a spotty than a stripy character. 1 Of course he is acquainted with the Cuckoo's peculiarity in laying her eggs, and the following is the answer to the question as to what becomes of the eggs or young of the unlucky bird in whose nest she has chosen to lay hers : " Some say that when the young Cuckoo grows it ejects the other young birds, which then perish ; others say that the foster-mother kills them and feeds the young Cuckoo with them, for the beauty of the young Cuckoo makes her despise her own offspring. People say that they have been eye-witnesses of these things. Others say that the old Cuckoo comes and devours the young ; others that the young Cuckoo is so big that it eats up all the food which was meant for the rest " ; and lastly he conies back to the first explanation he gave, which is indeed the right one, that the young Cuckoo in some way gets 1 H. A. vi. 7. 2. Such must be the meaning of the words TOU fdv ttpaKos T& Troi/cJXa olov ypawal el