Among the Birds in Northern Shires

Charles Dixon

Among the Birds in Northern Shires

PREFACE

The present volume must be regarded more as a popular introduction to the bird-life of our northern shires than in any way as an exhaustive faunal treatise, although at the same time we believe almost every indigenous species has been included. For twenty years we lived surrounded by these northern birds, so that we may fairly claim to have served our ornithological apprenticeship amongst them. With the birds of South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire we are specially familiar; whilst repeated visits not only to the Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Northumbrian littoral, but farther afield into Lancashire, and various parts of the Lowlands and the Highlands of Scotland, have enabled us to acquire much personal information relating to the avifauna of many a northern shire.

The difference between the avifaunæ of the northern and southern shires is strongly marked in many respects. Their study makes a record of avine comparisons of the most intense interest. The important effects produced by latitude and climate upon the bird-life of these widely separated areas make material for fascinating investigation, and have been fully dwelt upon as opportunities were presented. This variation in avine phenomena is not only far too often entirely ignored, but is apt to lead the student of bird-lore astray; due allowance has to be made in many cases for this difference in latitude, and all that it involves. The present volume, then, to a great extent a study of ornithological comparisons, will, we trust, be of some service to the bird lover or the bird student in his task of making allowances.

Unquestionably these northern shires from an ornithological point of view are much more interesting than the southern, and especially the south-western counties. Their avifauna is richer, and presents far greater variety, notably during the breeding season; whilst the marvellous phenomenon of Migration there unfolds itself each season in a manner that is never remarked elsewhere.

CHARLES DIXON.

Paignton, S. Devon.

CHAPTER I

BY UPLAND STREAMS

There are few things more interesting to the lover of bird-life than the comparison of ornithological phenomena as they are presented in various localities, separated, it may be, by but few degrees of latitude. Not only does this apply to the species themselves – for even in our own islands the geographical distribution of birds conforms a good deal to latitude, – but to their migrational movements, their resumption of voice, their seasons of reproduction, their gatherings and movements generally, and finally to not a few habits that appear to be confined within narrow territorial limits. We have already dealt with bird-life in its many aspects in southern haunts with a view to the comparison of avine phenomena with that of more northern localities; we now propose in the present volume to review the most salient ornithological characteristics of certain favoured northern shires, especially with the object of bringing them out in contrast by their comparative study. The ornithologist with a southern experience, studying bird-life in a northern county – say in Yorkshire, for example – will soon find that the avifauna of the two areas, although it possesses much in common, is in many respects different. Birds that he was wont to find common in southern haunts are rare here; others that were scarce in the south, and which he was apt to regard even as rarities, are quite common. Not a few species are met with that are seldom normally seen in southern haunts, and opportunities are afforded him of studying the nesting economy of species, the breeding areas of which are decidedly boreal. Then, again, the change of latitude involves a change of climate, especially in winter; slight, perhaps, it may be, comparatively speaking, but yet sufficient to influence the habits and movements of birds in quite a different way from those prevailing in the milder atmosphere of southern haunts. Birds that sing all the winter through in these southern shires are silent here at that season; others that are sedentary there are of migratory habits in the wilder and colder north – in obedience to those climatic influences that act upon the food supply, and so on. The farther north he goes the more acute will the contrast in avine phenomena become; and in species common to the two areas – to northern and southern counties respectively – he will find differences of from one to two months in the ornithological calendar. Lastly, he will meet with a multitude of interesting forms, both in summer and in winter, that are normally strangers to southern localities at one season or the other, or at both seasons.

We will commence our observations by an investigation of the bird-life along the upland streams – not in their lower and quieter reaches, but at some elevation up the hillsides where the waters hurry and tumble along over rocky beds and between more or less precipitous banks fringed with alders, mountain-ashes, bracken, and brambles. The southern counties can boast no such streams; and even in the wilder south-west of England the becks are wanting in that grandeur that characterizes most of these turbulent northern waters. For twenty years or more we lived surrounded by them and within ear of their noisy clamour; whilst the birds upon their banks were our constant companions summer and winter alike. To our mind the ideal upland stream is one of the most picturesque features in the Peak district. They may be grander and wilder farther north, but with experiences of them in the remote Highlands and the Hebrides in mind, for romantic charm and wealth of bird-life these Derbyshire and Yorkshire brooks, in our opinion, remain unequalled. Almost every valley in the Peak can boast a streamlet of some kind. Some of course are more imposing than others, drain larger areas of upland, and contain a much greater volume of water. Some plough their way across the open moorland, their bed in summer being dry or nearly so; whilst others purl down wooded valleys and along well-timbered bottoms, between the ridges of millstone grit that are such a prominent feature in this particular kind of country. In their higher and wilder reaches such rivers as the Dove, the Wye, and the Derwent – all beloved by the angler for trout and grayling – may be taken as very excellent examples of upland streams. The Rivelin, with its charming branches of Blackbrook and Wyming brook, and itself a tributary of the now polluted and ill-used Don, upon which grimy Sheffield is partly situated, were all favourite streams of ours rich in ornithological associations. So, too, was the Sheaf, with once picturesque Meersbrook, especially in its upper waters between the villages of Dore and Hathersage.

Were we asked to name the most characteristic bird of these upland streams we should unhesitatingly answer, the Dipper. Not that the bird can be regarded as plentiful anywhere; and we know not a few streams where this engaging species has dwindled seriously in numbers during the past twenty years, due partly to the senseless persecution of keepers and others, and partly to the much greater number of people that wander along the banks nowadays compared with years ago. Be this as it may, the Dipper is still sparingly dispersed along most of the streams suited to its requirements. Its exclusive habits tend to characterize it as rarer than it actually is, and its peculiarity of keeping a length of water reserved for itself and its mate creates an impression of absolute scarcity which in many cases does not actually exist. No wonder the old school of naturalists were at a loss to assign a place in their classifications to this curious bird. Brisson included it among the Sandpipers and called it Tringa merula aquatica; but Linnæus, with more discernment, associated it with the Passeres in his genus Sturnus, which is now restricted to the typical Starlings. Modern ornithologists have fared little better, and the poor Dipper, even in quite recent years, has been tossed about from one group to another utterly regardless of its true affinities. In some modern books we find it associated with the Thrushes, in others with the Wrens, but with neither group falling naturally. There may be some of its special characteristics, as, for instance, the coat of down that more or less covers the body below the feathers, due to its peculiar habits and economy; but, on the other hand, the very peculiar character of its nest and eggs (which we regard as of some importance in determining its taxonomic position) seems to suggest that the small group of birds of which the Common Dipper is typical, is not very closely allied to any other existing group, and fully to warrant the separation of these birds from other Passeres into a family apart. Small as this family is, the dozen species of which it is composed are scattered over a very large proportion of the earth’s surface. Dippers in one form or another are found over the greater part of Europe, Asia, and North Africa; they occur on the upland streams of the Himalayas, and in the mountains of Formosa. Across the Atlantic they inhabit the hill streams of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes.

Our British Dipper, as probably most readers at all familiar with the bird may be aware, is one of the most sedentary of our indigenous species. Both here and in those parts of continental Europe which the typical species frequents, as well as the slightly different northern form from Scandinavia, the birds keep closely to their native streams summer and winter alike, only wandering from them in the very exceptional event of the torrents becoming frost-bound. Such a peculiarity has resulted in the establishment by variation and isolation of an almost endless number of local races or sub-specific forms. To a slight extent this may be remarked even in our own islands, birds from various localities exhibiting differences of coloration, but when we come to review the Dippers of the entire Palæarctic region the amount of variation amongst them is much more pronounced. The scope of the present little volume forbids a scientific revision of the genus Cinclus; but a glimpse of the sprightly little brown and white bird bobbing up and down like a fleck of foam amidst the whirling waters of a northern trout stream suggests a passing allusion to these interesting facts.

The English local names of the Dipper are not without interest. It is somewhat curious to find that the local name of Water-crow has been applied to this bird not only in Cornwall but almost universally in Scotland. The names Water-ouzel and Dipper are of very ancient application. That of “Dipper” was not “apparently invented in 1804”, as Professor Newton suggests in his Dictionary of Birds (p. 151), by the author of the letterpress in Bewick’s British Birds (presumably Beilby); for we find it used many years previously (in 1771) by Tunstall in his Ornithologia Britannica, a work which was reprinted by the Willughby Society in 1880 under the editorship of Professor Newton himself! There can be no doubt whatever that the name had been applied much earlier still. The derivation of the words Water-crow and Water-ouzel is not difficult to determine; but that of “Dipper” is open to considerable doubt. To us it seems just as reasonable to presume that the bird received this name from its unique habit of “dipping” in the stream as from its singular dipping or bobbing motion when perched on some stone or rock in the bed of the torrent, as is suggested in Bewick’s work on British birds. In some parts of the Highlands the Dipper is known locally as the Kingfisher.

Although we have had not a little experience of the Dipper on the streams of a southern county we are bound to confess that the bird seems somewhat out of place upon them, possibly because we have been so accustomed to his society amidst wilder surroundings in much more northern shires. We picture him best upon the wild trout streams of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, or as a tenant of the dancing burns of the Highlands and the Western Isles. Here he is one of the most characteristic species of the stream, constantly attached to the turbulent foam-flecked waters, part and parcel of the scenery itself. As a musician the Dipper does not take a very prominent place in the avine chorus, but his music is in full harmony with its wild surroundings, though often overpowered by the noise of the torrent – a low-pitched jerky and uneven carol, not very long-continued if uttered at frequent intervals. Perhaps we might not be strictly accurate in describing the Dipper as a habitual perennial songster like the Robin, nevertheless he warbles now and then during the winter months, and is one of the first birds to resume regular music in the early spring. We are assured that the Dipper sings at intervals during all the rigour of a Scotch winter, proof of his robustness and hardy temperament. In Devonshire his winter song might be naturally expected; for there the Song Thrush and the Sky-lark are musical enough at that season, although mute, or nearly so, in northern shires. We have listened to his wild uneven music on some of the Yorkshire streams during winter when icicles a couple of feet in length have draped the rocks, or when the surrounding country-side has been covered deep with snow. Unfortunately, almost everywhere the Dipper somehow has got a bad name – a reputation amongst anglers for destroying the spawn of sporting fishes. Like the poor Owl, and not a few other feathered outcasts, he is universally persecuted for these imaginary misdeeds. But in reality he is one of the actual preservers of the ova he is accused of eating, for his food largely consists of larvæ of certain insects which in that stage of their existence are particularly destructive to the spawn. We have dissected a great many Dippers at one time and another from many different localities, and have always been much impressed with the uniform similarity of the contents of their stomachs – a little grit and the remains of insects and worms. We have, however, known the Dipper in exceptional cases to prey upon small fish, but are convinced, by the experience of a lifetime, that such food is taken so rarely as scarcely to deserve mention at all. Whenever we pause to watch the aquatic gambols of this sprightly bird, we feel less inclined to wonder why a past generation of naturalists included it amongst the water-fowl. The way it enters the quiet pools or the swifter running reaches of the stream, dashing beneath the surface from some water-encircled stone, and rising again some distance away just to take breath and then again to disappear, is never without a certain element of surprise, accustomed as we are to the habits of this bird. We can recall a northern stream – situated in the Rivelin valley close to Hollow Meadows – specially favourable for watching the actions of the Dipper. In some parts it was confined by lofty banks, upon which we could lie concealed and look right down into the clear water, and here, when the pair of Dippers that frequented the spot were on the feed, we might watch their every movement whilst they were under the surface. This stream is used as a conduit to convey the water from one large reservoir to another, and was consequently often in flood. We have often remarked that the Dippers were exceptionally busy in searching for food on these occasions, doubtless because insects and larvæ were disturbed by the unusual flow of water. Such times, however, were not favourable for observation. We liked best to watch the ways of these charming birds when the stream flowed slower, when the water was clearer, and certain reaches were almost undisturbed by the current. The Kingfisher, as most readers may know, has but one method of feeding, by plunging into the water and returning to the air almost at once. The Dipper, on the other hand, in his quest for sustenance, is as much aquatic as a Grebe or a Moorhen. He is quite as much at home in the water as in the air or on dry land. Sometimes he walks deliberately from the bank or from a sloping moss-covered stone into the water; at others he takes a short flight over the stream and drops suddenly down into the pool; whilst yet again we have often seen him arrest a long-continued flight – which, by the way, follows every bend of the brook – and, fluttering for a moment, poise and disappear beneath the surface at once. The Dipper only maintains his subaqueous position by much evident exertion of his wings and legs and feet. Generally the wings are kept in motion whilst the bird searches the bed of the stream, but sometimes these may be seen at rest, and the body is kept beneath the water by the feet clutching the big stones and the strands of moss and other aquatic plants. Not only does the bird float buoyantly enough upon the water, but it swims well, often for many yards at a time. Dippers are exceedingly attached to certain reaches of the stream and to favourite nesting sites, using the latter year after year, often in spite of much disturbance. In this special valley we always used to find the nest in one particular spot – wedged under an overhanging rock on the bank of the stream. The nest of this species is a very characteristic one, and cannot readily be mistaken for that of any other British bird. In external appearance it bears some resemblance to that of the Wren, being of the same globular form, but a cursory examination will soon set any doubt at rest. In a great many – we might almost say the majority of – cases the nest is made outwardly of moss (sphagnum always by preference), amongst which a little dry grass is interwoven, especially round the entrance hole. This mossy globe is lined with grass roots and sometimes fine twigs, and then again lined with an enormous quantity of dead leaves all arranged very neatly layer over layer. There is never any lining of wool or feathers, and the five or six white eggs are almost exactly the same size as those of the Song Thrush. The Dipper is an early breeder even in the northern shires, commencing to build at the end of March or early in April, and rearing several broods during the course of the season. The young birds are most interesting little creatures. We retain many vivid remembrances of the actions of broods of Dippers that we have unexpectedly disturbed. The tiny creatures, when only able to fly or flutter for a few yards at most, will take to the water to escape pursuit just as readily as the chicks of a Grebe or a Moorhen, and are equally as alert and active in that element. We have upon more than one occasion known the four or five youngsters flutter out of the nest one after the other, and at once tumble into the stream below, where all efforts at capture have usually been unavailing. Not only do the nestlings dive and flutter about the water, but they are adepts at concealing themselves amongst chinks of the rocks or under the moss and herbage growing in the stream. When required for examination, we always found the best way to secure them was with our landing-net. The song of the Dipper declines considerably as spring merges into summer. The cock bird warbles most frequently whilst sitting on some water-encircled stone or rock, but we have known him to perch and sing in the alder-trees growing by the water-side. We always consider him to be in finest voice during March and April – a habit fully in keeping with his robust temperament, and one which instantly puts us in mind of a louder and sweeter singer, the Missel-thrush. The Dipper is the one constant avine dweller on the upland streams, consequently we must in fairness regard him as the most characteristic bird of these localities.

Another and daintier species, however, is almost his equal in this respect, and that is the Gray Wagtail. This bird is more susceptible to the changing seasons, and at the approach of winter deserts the higher streams altogether, or comes down to the lower and more sheltered reaches of others. The Gray Wagtail is a familiar bird along all our Yorkshire and Derbyshire streams and rivers. We look for him quite as a matter of course when we reach the rocks, and the alder and birch and mountain-ash trees, just as we expect there to find the Dipper. But this is in summer mostly; in winter he becomes far more familiar, and during that season comes much nearer to the busy haunts of men. We have often seen Gray Wagtails in the bed of the grimy Don and Sheaf in the very heart of smoky Sheffield during mid-winter; and we know the bird as a winter resident about all the streams and sluices and dams in the series of Endcliffe Woods. The bird seems, however, closely attached to the stream in its upland solitudes, and at the first sign of spring goes back to favourite haunts among the moorlands and hills. We can recall many a romantic reach of the Derwent, the Wye, and the Dove, where the Gray Wagtail, the Dipper, and the Kingfisher might be watched together, the former bird, daintiest and most charming of its kind, deftly poised on a rock in mid-stream vigorously beating its long tail, looking like a single feather until it was opened as the startled bird took flight; the two latter species flying alarmed away arrow-like, following the winding waters, the one as a particoloured ball, the other as a blue undefined streak of refulgent light. So likewise has the Gray Wagtail oft been our sole bird companion on many a Highland water, both on the mainland and in Skye. We never tire of watching its sylph-like actions, the dainty way it poises on the stones or flits along before us stage after stage in undulating flight uttering its cheery chiz zit as it goes, or of admiring the exquisite blending of its showy yet delicately coloured plumage. We have often made his acquaintance upon more southern waters, far away in the remote south-west of England, but somehow he never there evokes the same feelings with which we greet him in northern haunts. The Gray Wagtail visits these upland streams for the purpose of rearing its young. Not every wanderer by the water-side is fortunate enough to get a peep at this bird’s domestic arrangements. It has, fortunately perhaps, a happy way of concealing its nest under some large stone or overhanging rock, or in a quiet nook, not necessarily in a secluded spot, but often close by the wayside, where the very audacity of the selection proves a source of safety. A scrappy little nest it is, dry grass and roots and such-like litter thrown carelessly together, and lined with hair or more rarely a few feathers; artless, yet possessing a rustic beauty if wanting that elaborate finish of more painstaking nest-builders. The five or six eggs are as unassuming as the nest that holds them, grayish-white freckled with brown, and perhaps with here and there a scratch of darker hue. The bird is an early breeder, making its nest in April, although we have remarked that in Scotland it is a little later in its operations. This pretty Wagtail still further endears itself to us by its attachment to a certain breeding-place, returning in many cases year by year to build its nest in one particular spot. Unfortunately the Gray Wagtail can claim but low rank as a songster. None of our British Wagtails are singers of much merit, and all confine their melody to fitful and short snatches of rambling song, almost invariably uttered as the bird hovers and flutters in the air. The Gray Wagtail’s charm rests in its pretty dress, its graceful actions, and to some extent in its loneliness, for there are few other small birds to arrest attention in the haunts it loves. It can claim our almost undivided admiration on the streams of the uplands from one extreme corner of Great Britain to the other. Certainly of few other birds can we say so much; although such an extended distribution is entirely due to physical conditions – to the presence of mountains and uplands throughout that area.

The Dipper and the Gray Wagtail are the two characteristic birds of the upland brook and river-side, rarely if ever seen anywhere else under normal circumstances, and, so far as our observations go, their happy lives are passed in much the same manner on the streams of both northern and southern shires, with the one exceptional movement to more sheltered areas on the part of the latter species in boreal localities. There is, however, another charming bird of the mountain streams which we cannot pass unnoticed, and that is the Common Sandpiper, or “Summer Snipe” as it is called in many districts. But this species is by no means exclusively confined to the banks and waters of the upland streams; neither is it a permanent dweller in such localities. It is a frequenter of our rivers and streams during summer only, the season of their greatest attractiveness; speeding south to Africa like the Swallows when autumn creeps over the uplands. From Cornwall to the Shetlands, wherever there are mountain streams and upland pools we may meet with the Common Sandpiper between the months of May and September, but it is in the northern shires that the bird becomes most abundant, say from the Peak district onwards. Our experience of this engaging bird has been a lifelong one. Each succeeding spring we used to note its arrival in the old accustomed haunts on the banks of the Yorkshire streams and moorland pools towards the end of April. It appears upon our Devonshire and Cornish waters nearly a fortnight earlier, yet farther north, in the Highlands, it is seldom seen before the first or second week in May. The return journey varies in a corresponding manner, August and September marking its southern departure from the north; but in the south it lingers into October, November, and even December – not, however, by the stream side, but on the sea-shore. The persistency with which this Sandpiper returns each year to certain localities, and its habit of nesting in the same spot summer after summer after a prolonged absence of seven months and a double journey of thousands of miles, are not the least attractive portions of its economy. For more summers than we can now recall, the streams and reservoirs at Hollow Meadows and Red Mires – within an hour or so’s walk of Sheffield – were visited by many pairs of Summer Snipes, and their nests came under our observation with unfailing certainty. Two pairs of these birds were remarkably conservative in their nesting-grounds, and used to return each summer to one spot of ground no larger than our writing-table, and there make their nests – one pair on the steep banks of a conduit between the reservoirs, the other on a few square yards of gravelly ground beside Wyming brook. We could always depend upon finding the nests of other pairs within a hundred yards of the stream banks on certain lengths of the water. We would hazard the conjecture that descendants of these birds continue to do so to the present day. During summer the Sandpiper was quite as familiar an object along these northern streams as the Dipper or the Gray Wagtail. Many a time have we seen the three species by the water-side together. Farther north, in Scotland, this Sandpiper becomes even more numerous, and in some parts of the Highlands is, or used to be, most unaccountably mixed up with the Dipper. The latter term included both species, the keepers not distinguishing between them. We have heard the Sandpiper called a “Water-crow” in various parts of Skye especially. Few birds evince more anxiety at the nest, or when their helpless chicks are just abroad. For the newly-laid eggs we cannot recall an instance of this species displaying any concern; but when those eggs are deeply incubated or the young hatched out the behaviour of the female bird especially becomes very different. She will feign a broken wing or lameness, or endeavour to draw all attention upon herself by running just out of reach of any observer foolish enough to give pursuit. But once the young birds have concealed themselves the parent flies away, or circles about in the air, generally being joined by her mate. The four handsome pear-shaped eggs – pale buff, splashed and spotted with rich brown and gray – in their scanty nest, usually made beneath the shelter of a heath tuft or bunch of grass, require no special protection from the parent, for they harmonize so closely in tint with surrounding objects that discovery is difficult in the extreme, even when we know the exact location of their resting-place. Curiously enough the Sandpiper is not aquatic in its habits. It never swims nor dives save when wounded, but obtains its food whilst tripping round the muddy and sandy portions of the water’s edge. In early summer, just after their arrival, the cock birds may frequently be seen running along the tops of walls and fences with outspread drooping wings, or even soaring into the air uttering a shrill note, both actions being connected with courtship and love. The usual note of the Common Sandpiper is a shrill weet uttered several times in succession, and heard most frequently as the bird rises startled from the bank and pursues its way across the water, often so low as to strike the surface with its wings.