A Year with the Birds

While I am upon Wagtails, let me say a word for our old friend the common Pied Wagtail, who is with us in varying numbers all the year round. It is for several reasons a most interesting bird. We have known it from our childhood; but foreign bird-lovers coming to England would find it new to them, unless they chanced to come from Western France or Spain. Like one or two other species of which our island is the favourite home, it is much darker than its continental cousin the White Wagtail, when in full adult plumage. Young birds are indeed often quite a light gray, and in Magdalen cloisters and garden, where the young broods love to run and seek food on the beautifully-kept turf, almost every variety of youthful plumage may be seen in June or July, from the sombrest black to the brightest pearl-gray. Last summer, I one day spent a long time here watching the efforts of a parent to induce a young bird to leave its perch and join the others on the turf: the nest must have been placed somewhat high up among the creepers, and the young bird, on leaving it, had ventured no further than a little stone statue above my head. The mother flew repeatedly to the young one, hovered before it, chattered and encouraged it in every possible way; but it was a long time before she prevailed.

Let us now return towards the city, looking into the Parks on our way. The Curators of the Parks, not less generous to the birds than to mankind, have provided vast stores of food for the former, in the numbers of birches and conifers which flourish under their care. They, or their predecessors who stocked the plantations, seem to have had the particular object of attracting those delightful little north-country birds the Lesser Redpolls, for they have planted every kind of tree in whose seeds they find a winter subsistence. Whether they come every winter I am unable to say, and am inclined to doubt it; but in 1884, any one who went the round of the Parks, keeping an eye on the birches, could hardly fail to see them, and they have been reported not only as taking refuge here in the winter, but even as nesting in the summer. A nest was taken from the branch of a fir-tree here in 1883, and in this present year, if I am not mistaken, another nest was built. I failed to find it, but I several times saw a pair of sportive Redpolls at the south-east corner of the Parks.6

It is one of the prettiest sights that our whole calendar of bird-life affords, to watch these tiny linnets at work in the delicate birch-boughs. They fear no human being, and can be approached within a very few yards. They almost outdo the Titmice in the amazing variety of their postures. They prefer in a general way to be upside down, and decidedly object to the common-place attitudes of more solidly built birds. Otherwise they are not remarkable for beauty at this time of year; their splendid crimson crest – the “Bluttropf,” as the Germans aptly call it – is hardly discernible, and the warm pink of their breasts has altogether vanished.

Before we leave the Parks I must record the fact that an eccentric Jack-snipe, who ought to have considered that he is properly a winter bird in these parts, was several times flushed here by the Cherwell in the summer of 1884, and the natural inference would be that a pair had bred somewhere near. Col. Montagu, the most accurate of naturalists, asserted that it has never been known to remain and breed in England; yet the observer in this case, a well-known college tutor who knows a Jack-snipe when he sees it, has assured me positively that there was no mistake; and some well-authenticated cases seem to have occurred since Montagu wrote.7

There are plenty of common birds to be seen even in winter on most days in the Parks, such as the Skylark, the Yellow-hammer and its relative the Black-headed Bunting, the Pied Wagtail, the Hedge-sparrow, and others; though lawn-tennis, and cricket, and new houses and brick walls, are slowly and surely driving them beyond the Cherwell for food and shelter. But there are some birds which may be seen to greater advantage in another part of Oxford, and we will take the short line to Christchurch Meadow, past Holywell Church, doubtless the abode of Owls, and the fine elms of Magdalen Park, beloved by the Woodpigeons.

All this lower part of the Cherwell, from Holywell mill to its mouth at the barges, abounds in snug and secure retreats for the birds. In Addison’s Walk, as well as in the trees in Christchurch Meadow, dwell the Nuthatch and the Tree-creeper, both remarkable birds in all their ways, and each representative of a family of which no other member has ever been found in these islands. They are tree-climbing birds, but they climb in very different ways: the Creeper helping himself, like the Woodpeckers, with the downward-bent feathers of his strong tail; while the Nuthatch, having no tail to speak of, relies chiefly on his hind claw. These birds are now placed, on account of the structure of their feet, in a totally different order to that of the Woodpeckers, who rank with the Swifts and the Nightjars.

One is apt to think of the Creeper as a silent and very busy bird, who never finds leisure to rest and preen his feathers, or to relieve his mind with song. When he does sing he takes us a little aback. One spring morning, as I was strolling in the Broad Walk, a Creeper flew past me and fixed himself on the thick branch of an elm – not on a trunk, as usual – and uttered a loud and vigorous song, something after the manner of the Wren’s. I had to turn the glass upon him to make sure that there was no mistake. This is the only occasion on which I have ever heard the Creeper sing, and it seems strange that a bird with so strong a voice should use it so seldom.

I have never but once seen the Green Woodpecker in Oxford, and that was as he flew rapidly over the Parks in the direction of the Magdalen elms. If he lives there, he must be known to the Magdalen men, but I have not had intelligence of him. The fact is that he is a much wilder bird than his near relation, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, who is, or was, beyond doubt an Oxford resident. A correspondent of the Oxford Magazine, “R. W. R.,” states that this bird bred outside his window at Trinity a few years ago, “but has not done so lately for reasons of his own, of which I approve.” Another correspondent, however, reports him from Addison’s Walk; and Mr. Macpherson of Oriel, whose eye is not likely to have erred, believed that he saw one in the Broad Walk a few years ago. I myself have not seen the bird nearer Oxford than Kennington; but I am pretty sure that it is commoner and also less shy than is generally imagined, and also that the ornithologist who sees it is not likely to mistake it for another bird: its very small size – it is not so large as a sparrow – its crimson head, and its wings, with their black and white bars, making it a conspicuous object to a practised eye.8

Christchurch Meadow is a favourite home of the Titmice. I believe that I have seen all the five English species here within a space of a very few days: English, not British, for there is one other, the Crested Tit, of which I shall have more to say in another chapter. A family of Longtails, or Bottle-tits, flits from bush to bush, never associating with the others, and so justifying its scientific separation from them. Another family is to be seen in the Parks, where they build a nest every year. These delightful little birds are however quite willing to live in the very centre of a town, indifferent to noise and dust. A Marsh-tit was once seen performing its antics on a lamp-post in St. Giles. A Great-tit built its nest in the stump of an old laburnum, in the little garden of Lincoln College, within a few yards of the Turl and High Street; the nest was discovered by my dog, who was prowling about the garden with a view to cats. I took great interest in this brood, which was successfully reared, and on one occasion I watched the parents bringing food to their young for twenty minutes, during which time they were fed fourteen times. The ringing note of this Great-tit or his relations is the first to be heard in that garden in winter-time, and is always welcome. The little Blue-tit is also forthcoming there at times. One Sunday morning I saw a Blue-tit climbing the walls of my College quadrangle, almost after the manner of a Creeper, searching the crannies for insects, and even breaking down the crust of weathered stone. Among memories of the rain, mist, and hard work of many an Oxford winter spent among these gray walls, “haec olim meminisse juvabit.”

But I have strayed away from Christchurch Meadow and the Botanic Garden. Here it is more especially that the Thrush tribe makes its presence felt throughout the autumn. In the Gardens the thrushes and blackbirds have become so tame from constant quiet and protection, that, like the donkeys at Athens of which Plato tells us, they will hardly deign to move out of your way. A blackbird proceeded calmly to take his bath, in the fountain at the lower end near the meadow, one morning when I was looking on, and seemed to be fully aware of the fact that there was a locked gate between us. Missel-thrushes are also to be seen here; and all these birds go out of a morning to breakfast on a thickly-berried thorn-bush at the Cherwell end of the Broad Walk, where they meet with their relations the Redwings, and now and then with a Fieldfare. The walker round the meadow in winter will seldom fail to hear the harsh call of the redwing, as, together with starlings innumerable, and abundance of blackbirds, they utter loud sounds of disapproval. There is one bush here whose berries must have some strange ambrosial flavour that blackbirds dearly love. All the blackbirds in Oxford seem to have their free breakfast-table here, and they have grown so bold that they will return to it again and again as I teasingly walk up and down in front of it, merely flying to a neighbouring tree when I scrutinize them too closely in search of a lingering Ring-ousel. Who ever heard of a flock of blackbirds? Here, however, in November, 1884, was a sight to be seen, which might possibly throw some light on the process of developing gregarious habits.9

Rooks, Starlings, Jackdaws, and Sparrows, which abound here and everywhere else in Oxford, every one can observe for themselves, and of Sparrows I shall have something to say in the next chapter; but let me remind my young readers that every bird is worth noticing, whether it be the rarest or the commonest. My sister laughs at me, because the other day she found an old copy of White’s Selborne belonging to me, wherein was inscribed on the page devoted to the Rook, in puerile handwriting, the following annotation: “Common about Bath” (where I was then at school). But I tell her that it was a strictly accurate scientific observation; and I only wish that I had followed it up with others equally unimpeachable.

But more out-of-the-way birds will sometimes come to Oxford, and I have seen a Kestrel trying to hover in a high wind over Christchurch Meadow, and a Heron sitting on the old gatepost in the middle of the field. Herons are often to be seen by the river-bank in Port Meadow; and it was here, some years ago, that Mr. W. T. Arnold, of University College, was witness of an extraordinary attack made by a party of three on some small birds. Port Meadow constantly entices sea-birds when it is under water, or when the water is receding and leaving that horrible slime which is so unpleasant to the nose of man; and in fact there is hardly a wader or a scratcher (to use Mr. Ruskin’s term)10 that has not at one time or another been taken near Oxford. Sometimes they come on migration, sometimes they are driven by stress of weather. Two Stormy Petrels were caught at Bossom’s barge in the Port Meadow not long ago, and exhibited in Mr. Darbey the birdstuffer’s window. And a well-known Oxford physician has kindly given me an interesting account of his discovery of a Great Northern Diver, swimming disconsolately in a large hole in the ice near King’s Weir, one day during the famous Crimean winter of 1854-5; this splendid bird he shot with a gun borrowed from the inn at Godstow. During the spring and early summer of 1866, our visitors from the sea-coast were constant and numerous. Even the beautiful and graceful little Tern (Sterna Minuta) more than once found his way here; and on the second occasion saved his own life by the confidence which he seemed to repose in man. ‘I intended to shoot it,’ wrote a young friend of mine, ‘but relented when I saw how tame and trustful it was.’

Specimens of almost all such birds are to be seen in the bird-cases of the Museum, and occasionally they may be seen in the flesh in the Market. Both Market and Museum will give plenty to do on a rainy day in winter: —

Ubi jam breviorque dies et mollior aestasQuae vigilanda viris!

CHAPTER II.

OXFORD: SPRING AND EARLY SUMMER

All the birds mentioned in the last chapter are residents in Oxford, in greater or less numbers according to the season, except the Fieldfares and Redwings, the Grey Wagtail, and the rarer visitors: and of these the Fieldfares and Redwings are the only true winter birds. They come from the north and east in September and October, and depart again in March and April. When we begin our Summer Term not one is to be seen. The berries in the meadow are all eaten up long before Lent Term is over, and though these are not entirely or even chiefly the Redwing’s food, the birds have generally disappeared with them.

They do not however leave the country districts till later. When wild birds like these come into a town, the cause is almost certain to be stress of weather; when the winter’s back is broken, they return to the fields and hedges till the approach of summer calls them northwards. There they assemble together in immense flocks, showing all the restlessness and excitement of the smaller birds that leave us in the autumn; suddenly the whole mass rises and departs like a cloud. Accounts are always forthcoming of the departure of summer migrants, and especially of the Swallows and Martins, and there are few who have not seen these as they collect on the sunny side of the house-roof, or bead the parapet of the Radcliffe building, before they make up their minds to the journey. But few have seen the Fieldfares and Redwings under the same conditions, and I find no account of their migration, or at least of what actually happens when they go, in any book within my reach as I write. But on March 19, 1884, I was lucky enough to see something of their farewell ceremonies. I was walking in some water-meadows adjoining a wood, on the outskirts of which were a number of tall elms and poplars, when I heard an extraordinary noise, loud, harsh, and continuous, and of great volume, proceeding from the direction of these trees, which were at the time nearly half-a-mile distant. I had been hearing the noise for a minute or two without attending to it, and was gradually developing a consciousness that some strange new agricultural instrument, or several of them, were at work somewhere near, when some Fieldfares flew past me to alight on the meadow not far off. Then putting up my glass, I saw that the trees were literally black with birds; and as long as I stayed, they continued there, only retreating a little as I approached, and sending foraging detachments into the meadow, or changing trees in continual fits of restlessness. The noise they made was like the deep organ-sounds of sea-birds in the breeding-time, but harsher and less serious. I would willingly have stayed to see them depart, but not knowing when that might be, I was obliged to go home: and the next day when I went to look for them, only a few were left.

These birds do not leave us as a rule before the first summer visitors have arrived. In the case I have just mentioned, the spring was a warm one, and the very next day I saw the ever-welcome Chiff-chaff, which is the earliest to come and the latest to go, of all the delicate warblers which come to find a summer’s shelter in our abundant trees and herbage.

I use this word ‘warbler’ in a sense which calls for a word of explanation: for not only are the birds which are called in the natural history books by this name often very difficult to distinguish, but the word itself has been constantly used to denote a certain class of birds, without any precise explanation of the species meant to be included in it. Nor is it in itself a very exact word; some of the birds which are habitually called warblers do not warble in the proper sense of the word,11 and many others who really warble, such as the common Hedge-sparrow, have no near relationship to the class I am speaking of. But as it is a term in use, and a word that pleases, I will retain it in this chapter, with an explanation which may at the same time help some beginner in dealing with a difficult group of birds.

If the reader of this book who really cares to understand the differences of the bird-life which abounds around us, will buy for a shilling Mr. Dresser’s most useful List of European Birds,12 he will find, under the great family of the Turdidae, three sub-families following each other on pages 7, 8, and 9, respectively called Sylvianae, or birds of woodland habits, Phylloscopinae, or leaf-searching birds, and Acrocephalinae, or birds belonging to a group many of the members of which have the front of the head narrow and depressed: and under all these three sub-families he will find several species bearing in popular English the name of warbler. At the same time he will find other birds in these sub-families, which are quite familiar to him, but not as ‘warblers’ in any technical sense of the word; thus the Robin will be found in the first sub-family, and the Golden-crested Wren in the second. But, leaving out these two species, and also the Nightingale, which is a bird of somewhat peculiar structure and habits, he will find four birds in the first sub-family belonging to the genus Sylvia, which are all loosely called warblers, and will be mentioned in this chapter as summer visitors to Oxford, viz. the Whitethroat (or Whitethroat-warbler), the Lesser Whitethroat, the Blackcap, and the Garden-warbler; he will also find two in the second, belonging to the genus Phylloscopus, the Chiff-chaff and the Willow-wren (or Willow-warbler), and two in the third, belonging to the genus Acrocephalus, the Sedge-warbler and the Reed-warbler. Let it be observed that each of these three genera, Sylvia, Phylloscopus, and Acrocephalus, is the representative genus of the sub-family in this classification, and has given it its name; so that we might expect to find some decided differences of appearance or habit between the members of these genera respectively. And this is precisely what is the case, as any one may prove for himself by a day or two’s careful observation.

The birds I have mentioned as belonging to the first genus, i. e. Whitethroat, etc., are all of a fairly substantial build, fond of perching, singing a varied and warbling song (with the exception of the Lesser Whitethroat, of whose song I shall speak presently), and all preferring to build their cup-shaped nest a little way from the ground, in a thick bush, hedge, or patch of thick-growing plants, such as nettles. They also have the peculiarity of loving small fruits and berries as food, and are all apt to come into our gardens in search of them, where they do quite as much good as harm by a large consumption of insects and caterpillars.

Secondly, the two kinds of birds belonging to the genus Phylloscopus, Chiff-chaff and Willow-warbler, are alike in having slender, delicate frames, with a slight bend forward as of creatures given to climbing up and down, in an almost entire absence of the steady perching habit, in building nests upon the ground with a hole at the side, and partly arched over by a roof of dried grass, in feeding almost exclusively on insects, and in singing a song which is always the same, each new effort being undistinguishable from the last. In fact these two birds are so much alike in every respect but their voices (which though unvarying are very different from each other), that it is almost impossible for a novice to distinguish them unless he hears them.

Thirdly, the two species belonging to the genus Acrocephalus, the Sedge- and Reed-warblers, differ from the other two groups in frequenting the banks of rivers and streams much more exclusively, where they climb up and down the water-plants, as their name suggests, and build a cup-shaped nest; and also in the nervous intensity and continuity of their song.

These eight species, then, are the ‘warblers,’ of whom I am going to speak in the first place. They may easily be remembered in these three groups by any one who will take the trouble to learn their voices, and to look out for them when they first arrive, before the leaves have come out and the birds are shy of approach on account of their nests and young. But without some little pains confusion is sure to arise, as we may well understand when we consider that a century ago even such a naturalist as White of Selborne had great difficulty in distinguishing them; he was in fact the first to discover the Chiff-chaff (one of our commonest and most obvious summer migrants) as a species separate from the others of our second group. To give an idea of the progress Ornithology has made during the last century, I will quote Markwick’s note on White’s communication: – ‘This bird, which Mr. White calls the smallest Willow-wren, or Chiff-chaff, makes its appearance very early in the spring, and is very common with us, but I cannot make out the three different species of Willow-wrens, which he says he has discovered.’13 Nothing but a personal acquaintance – a friendship, as I must call it in my own case – with these little birds, as they live their every-day life among us, will suffice to fix the individuality of each species in the mind; not even the best plates in a book, or the faded and lifeless figures in a museum. You may shoot and dissect them, and study them as you would study and label a set of fossils: but a bird is a living thing, and you will never really know him till you fully understand how he lives.

Let us imagine ourselves taking a stroll into the Parks with the object of seeing these eight birds, not as skeletons, but as living realities. The first to present themselves to eye and ear will be the two species of the second group, which may roughly be described (so far at least as England is concerned) as containing Tree-warblers. From the tall trees in St. John’s Gardens, before we reach the Museum, we are certain on any tolerably warm day to hear the Willow-warbler, which has been the last few years extremely abundant; in Oxford alone there must have been two or three hundred pairs in the spring of 1885. From the same trees is also pretty sure to come ringing the two notes of the Chiff-chaff, which is a less abundant bird, but one that makes its presence more obvious. Let us pause here a moment to make our ideas clear about these two. We may justly take them first, as they are the earliest of their group to arrive in England.

When the first balmy breath of spring brings the celandines into bloom on the hedge-bank, and when the sweet violets and primroses are beginning to feel the warmth of the sun, you may always look out for the Chiff-chaff on the sheltered side of a wood or coppice. As a rule, I see them before I hear them; if they come with an east wind, they doubtless feel chilly for a day or two, or miss the plentiful supply of food which is absolutely necessary to a bird in full song. Thus in 1884, I noted March 20 as the first day on which I saw the Chiff-chaff, and March 23 as the first on which I heard him. The next year, the month of March being less genial, I looked and listened in vain till the 31st. On that day I made a circuit round a wood to its sunny side, sheltered well from east and north, and entering for a little way one of these grassy ‘rides’ which are the delight of all wood-haunting birds, I stood quite still and listened. First a Robin, then a Chaffinch broke the silence; a Wood-pigeon broke away through the boughs; but no Chiff-chaff. After a while I was just turning away, when a very faint sound caught my ear, which I knew I had not heard for many months. I listened still more keenly, and caught it again; it was the prelude, the preliminary whisper, with which I have noticed that this bird, in common with a few others, is wont to work up his faculties to the effort of an outburst of song. In another minute that song was resounding through the wood.