A Year with the Birds

I myself have been fortunate in having as a companion an old friend, a native of the Oberland, who has all his life been attentive to the plants and animals of his beloved mountains. Johann Anderegg will be frequently mentioned in this chapter, and I will at once explain who he is. A peasant of the lower Hasli-thal, in the canton of Bern, born before the present excellent system of education had penetrated into the mountains, was not likely to have much chance of developing his native intelligence; but I have never yet found his equal among the younger generation of guides, either in variety of knowledge, or in brightness of mental faculty. He taught himself to read and write, and picked up knowledge wherever he found a chance. When his term of military service was over, he took to the congenial life of a guide and “jäger,” in close fellowship with his first cousin and namesake, the famous Melchior, the prince of guides. But a long illness, which sent him for many months to the waters of Leukerbad, incapacitated him for severe climbing, and at the same time gave him leisure for thinking and observing: Melchior outstripped him as a guide, and their companionship, always congenial to both as men possessed of lively minds as well as muscular bodies, has long been limited to an occasional chat over a pipe in winter-time.

But he remained an ardent hunter, and has always been an excellent shot: and it was in this capacity, I believe, that he first became useful to the Professor Fatio whom I mentioned just now. He did much collecting for him, and in the course of their expeditions together, contrived to learn a great deal about plants, insects, and birds, most of which he retains in his old age. There is nothing scientific in his knowledge, unless it be a smattering of Latin names, which he brings out with great relish if with some inaccuracy; but it is of a very useful kind, and is aided by a power of eyesight which is even now astonishing in its keenness. I first made his acquaintance in 1868, and for several years he accompanied my brother and myself in glacier-expeditions in all parts of the Alps; but it has been of late years, since we have been less inclined for strenuous exertion, that I have found his knowledge of natural history more especially useful to me. He is now between sixty and seventy, but on a bracing alp, with a gun on his shoulder, his step is as firm and his enjoyment as intense, as on the day when he took us for our first walk on a glacier, eighteen years ago.

The mention of his gun reminds me, that though my old friend’s eyes and my own field-glasses were of the greatest help to me, I could not always satisfy myself as to the identity of a species; and two years ago I was forced to sacrifice the lives of some six or seven individuals. This, it is worth knowing, is illegal in all parts of Switzerland, and illegal at all times of the year; and I had to obtain a license from the Cantonal Government at Bern, kindly procured for me by another old acquaintance, Herr Immer of Meiringen and the Engstlen-alp, to shoot birds ‘in the cause of science.’ This delighted Anderegg; but at my earnest request he suppressed his sporting instincts, or only gave them rein in fruitless scrambles over rock and snow in search of Ptarmigan and Marmots.

I propose to occupy the latter part of this chapter in taking my readers a short expedition, in company with Anderegg, in search of Alpine birds; but let me first say something of the general conditions and characteristics of bird-life in Switzerland.

And first of the number of species, and abundance of individuals. People sometimes tell me that they never see any birds in the Alps. An elderly German, whose bodily exertions were limited, and whose faculties seemed to turn inwards on himself instead of radiating outwards, could not understand why I should go to Switzerland to study birds – for he could see none. And it is indeed true that they do not swarm there, as with us; in this respect Switzerland is like the rest of the Continent. It is a curious fact, that though we have only lately begun to preserve our small birds by law in the breeding-season, they are far more abundant here than they are in any part of the Continent known to me: and this is the case even with the little delicate migrants, many of which seem to have a preference for England in spite of the risk of the sea-crossing. I remember taking up a position one afternoon by the side of a rushing stream, dividing beautiful hay-meadows, and edged with dwarf willows; and during the half-hour I sat there, I neither saw nor heard a single bird. In such a spot in England there would have been plenty. But this is an exception: the rule is, that you may read wherever you run, if you will keep your eyes and ears open, and learn by experience where chiefly to be on the look-out. Variety is more interesting than numbers; the birds are more obvious from their comparative rarity; and their voices are not lost, as is sometimes the case with us, in a general and unceasing chorus. As regards the number of species in the country, I have never seen an accurate computation of it. But looking over Mr. Dresser’s very useful catalogue of the Birds of Europe, I calculate roughly that it would amount to about three hundred in all; i. e. less by some seventy or eighty than the avi-fauna of the British Islands. This is, however, a remarkably large number for a country that possesses no sea-board and very few of those sea-birds which form so large a contingent in our wonderful British list; and it suggests a few remarks on the causes which bring some birds to the Alps periodically, and have tempted others to make them their permanent home.

The greatest attractions for birds, and therefore the chief agents – as far as our present knowledge reaches – in inducing birds to move from place to place are food and variety of temperature. Now in the Alps we find these conditions of bird-life everywhere present, except, of course, in the very highest levels of snow and ice. The seed-eating birds find sufficient food in the rich hay, thick and sweet with flowers, which covers the whole of the Alpine pastures from May to July, and abundance of corn, flax, and fruit in the valleys: in the steep pine-woods that usually separate these valleys from the pastures, the larger seed-eaters enjoy an endless supply of fir-cones. The insect-eating birds are still more fortunate. Nothing is more striking in the Alps than the extraordinary abundance in the summer of insects of all kinds, as we know to our cost in the sun-baked valleys; and on the mountains it is equally wonderful though less annoying. There it is that the beetles have their paradise. In loose heaps of stone, often collected to clear a stony pasture; in the wooden palings used to separate alp from alp; in the decaying lumber of the pine-forests, beetles both small and great are absolutely swarming. A clergyman, pastor of a valley near Meiringen, who collected them, found more than eight hundred different species in his parish alone. All the birds shot for me at the Engstlen-alp had been living on a diet of minute beetles as their principal food. It is indeed wonderful to notice the strange disproportion between the abundance of food provided and the numbers of the birds who avail themselves of the repast: there is so much more to eat than can ever possibly be eaten.

But we must remember that this is the case only during the warm months. During the greater part of the year the snow is on the ground in the regions of which I am speaking, and hardly any birds are to be found there. A great and general migration takes place, either to the valleys below, or out of the mountain region altogether, southward, or in a very few cases, northward. Switzerland is, in fact, an admirable centre for the study of migration; migration, that is, on a large scale, where the birds leave the country entirely, and also on that limited scale which we call in England ‘partial’ migration. I believe that the Alps will some day win the attention of the ornithologists as being one of the best of all positions as a centre of observation. We will pause for a moment to glance at it in this light.

We need hardly look at the map to see that the huge mass of the Alps lies directly in the path of the great yearly migration of birds from south and east to northern Europe. The question arises at once, does this immense mountain-range, with its icy peaks and wind-swept passes, act as an obstacle to the travelling birds, or do they rise to it and cross it, without going round, into the plains of North Switzerland and Germany? I confess that I should like to be able to answer this question with greater certainty; but I believe the right answer, in the rough, to be as follows. In the first place, a large number of species never attempt to cross the mountains, but remain in the great basin of the Po, and in southern France, the whole summer, thus making the avi-fauna of Lombardy distinct in many points from that of Switzerland. If we look through the works of Dresser, Gould, or Bree, on European birds, with the object of learning something on this point, we find that bird after bird, especially among the tenderer kinds of warblers, gets no further than North Italy and the southern slopes of the Alps, seldom straggling into Switzerland proper. On the other hand, some migrating birds, such as the Black Redstart, the Citril Finch, and some of the hardier warblers, seem to desire a cool climate to breed in, and doubtless come across the passes to inhabit the Alpine pastures during the whole of the summer. How far this is also the case with the vast number of more delicate birds, such as the various Reed- and Willow-warblers, who live by the rivers and lakes during the summer, I cannot undertake to say; and it is a mere guess on my part if I hazard an opinion that many of these must come into Switzerland by way of France and Austria. Anderegg sent me word last autumn that he had noticed the Swallows leaving Meiringen, not southwards over the Grimsel pass towards Italy, but westwards, as if they were seeking to turn the vast mountain barrier. Yet it is a known fact that on some of the passes birds are watched and killed in their passage.

But I have still to speak of partial or internal migration in Switzerland; and this is what, if I am not mistaken, will prove a very fertile source of ornithological knowledge when thoroughly understood. As I said before, the agents which chiefly cause birds to move from one place to another (so far as we know), are food-supply and temperature. Now we have only to look at a raised map of Switzerland to see at once how subject the birds must be to such incitements towards change of place. Any one who has been to Switzerland will have noticed that the scenery falls into three great divisions – that of the lakes and valleys, that of the Alpine pastures and forests, and lastly, that of the regions on the border-line of perpetual snow, running upwards to the higher snow-fields. The professional mountaineer pays little attention to any but the last of these; the botanist and ornithologist have, fortunately, much reason to pause and reap a harvest in the lower levels, which are incomparably more beautiful. For convenience’ sake I will call the lowest, No. 1; the second – that of the Alpine pastures, No. 2; and the highest, No. 3. The distribution of birds in these three regions is continually changing. No. 3, in the winter, is entirely devoid of life and food. The Eagles and the great bearded Vultures, now very rare, can find not even a marmot to prey upon, for they are all asleep in their burrows. The Snow-finches and the Ptarmigan, which in the summer delight in the cool air of an altitude of 8000 to 10,000 feet, have descended to No. 2, or even lower, compelled by want of food and water: and so too the red-winged Rock-creeper, the Alpine-pipit and others, which may be seen in summer close to the great glaciers. In the same way the birds which haunt No. 2 in the summer – I am speaking of those which do not leave the country altogether – descend in the autumn to No. 1, and there remain till the following spring: among these are the Ring-ousel and Blackbird, the Nutcrackers, the Titmice, the Alpine Choughs, the Alpine Accentor, and others. Then in the spring the reverse process takes place. As the spring advances up the mountain-slopes, which it gains slowly, not reaching the highest region of vegetation till June or even July, the birds follow it. Region No. 1, now peopled by the immigrations from Africa and the Mediterranean, sends on large numbers of its winter birds to region No. 2, where, like the cows and the herdsmen who ascend about the same time, they enjoy cool air and abundance of food in the well-watered pastures. Meanwhile the Snow-finches, the Ptarmigan, and the birds of prey, who have been living during the winter in the lower slopes and woods of region No. 2, retire upwards to breed in the rocks and snowy crevices of No. 3. We can hardly help believing that with all these wonderful provisions of nature for their change of scene and temperature, these partial migrants of Switzerland must lead a life supremely happy. Man himself and his cattle are partial migrants in the Alps; and no day is so welcome to the herdsman as that on which the authorities of his commune fix for the first movement of the cows upwards. Bitter indeed has been the disappointment of my old guide, now the happy possessor of two cows, when he has not been able to follow them in their annual migration to the cooler pastures. He could realize the feelings of a caged bird, unable to follow its fellows in seeking the southern lands for which its heart yearns.

Before leaving this subject I should, perhaps, note that these three regions are not divided from each other by any definite line; and in respect of their bird-life I need hardly say they slide insensibly into each other. But I think it will be found that the division is a fair one for our purposes, and is a useful one to bear in mind in all dealings with the natural history of the country.

I will now ask my readers to follow me mentally in an expedition which will bring us into actual contact with many of the birds I have noticed in Switzerland. We will choose a route which from its great beauty, comparative quiet, and good inns, has always been a favourite of mine, and will carry us over parts of all the three regions I have just described, enabling us to compare their avi-fauna with that of our own country. Starting from the village of Stanz-stadt, famous in Swiss history, which stands on that arm of the lake of Lucerne which lies immediately beneath Mount Pilatus, we will pass up the luxuriant valley of the Aa, in canton Unter-walden, to Engelberg, where most of the land and forest is owned by the monks of a great monastery, whose care for their possessions has doubtless helped to make them a pleasant home for the birds; then we will mount to the pastures of the Gerstni-alp, in region No. 2, and so upwards to the Joch-pass, which in early summer is covered with snow, and introduces us to region No. 3. Descending for an hour to the Engstlen-alp, loveliest of Swiss pastures, we find ourselves here, at the excellent inn, again in No. 2, but still within very easy reach of No. 3; and then we can pass downwards through the Gentelthal, or along the pastures that look down on it from the north – for there are three different ways, all of them of the rarest beauty – to the deep valley of the Aar, or Hasli-thal, where we arrive once more in region No. 1.

On reaching Stanz-stadt, I always take a turn along the road that here forms a narrow causeway between two divisions of the lake, and is bordered on one side for some distance by a broad bed of reeds. Any ornithologist would see at once that something is in store for him here, and if I had had time or patience to stay here in the heat, I might probably have seen more than I did see. The Bittern occasionally visits these reeds, for the landlord of the inn showed me a very fine specimen which he himself had shot. They are also the summer residence of those Warblers which love reeds, and which abound much more on the reedier lakes of Biel and Neuchâtel. On my last visit to Stanz-stadt, my companion being in a hurry to get into cooler climes, I had only a quarter of an hour to spend on this bit of road; but my ear instantly caught the song of our Reed-warbler, to which I had been listening for many weeks at Oxford, while learning to distinguish it from that of its near relation the Sedge-warbler. It was pleasant to hear the familiar strain the very instant my long journey was over. The Marsh-warbler, the Aquatic-warbler, and others of their kind, are all to be seen by the rivers and lakes of our lowest region (No. 1), rarely ascending higher; and he who has the courage to spend a few days in the baking and biting valley of the Rhone, for example, will find them all among the desolate reed- and willow-beds of that, to man, most inhospitable river.

Here also, at Stanz-stadt, and all up the valley to Engelberg, and at Engelberg itself in abundance, may be seen the White Wagtail of the continent, which is as comparatively rare in England as our common Pied Wagtail is abroad. The two forms are very closely allied, our Pied Wagtail in winter very closely resembling the White bird in its summer dress. The difficulty of distinguishing the two caused me to pay great attention to these White Wagtails whenever I saw them. If you see a bird in summer which has a uniform pearl-gray back, set off sharply against a black head, the black coming no further down than the nape of the neck, it is the White Wagtail. You must look at his back chiefly; it is far the most telling character. The male Pied Wagtail has at this season a black back, and the female has hers darker and less uniform in colour than the genuine White bird. I shall have something more to say of Wagtails in the course of our walk; but let me take this opportunity of asking the special attention of travellers on the continent to these most beautiful and puzzling birds, whose varieties of plumage at different seasons of the year seem almost endless, and whose classification is still by no means finally settled.

As we travel up the valley to Engelberg, and in the higher portion of it in which Engelberg stands, a considerable variety of birds may be seen which are familiar to us as British species. The Whin-chat is nestling in the meadows, and swaying itself on the tops of the long grasses; our common English Redstart is seen here and there, but not often, on the walls and palings; the Creeper runs up the stems of the fruit-trees, and the Nuthatch has its nest in holes in the maple-trees, which in these valleys are of great size and beauty. In the woods and undergrowth you may see the Chiff-chaff, and Willow-wren, and Garden-warbler, and here and there a Buzzard: the Robin and Blackbird are about, but not nearly so common as with us, and we are at first surprised at the absence of Song-thrushes,21 and the comparative rarity of Sparrows, Skylarks, and Yellowhammers.

The commonest bird of all in the Engelberg valley, is one which we seldom see in England, and never in the summer. This is the Black-redstart, a bird which has a wide summer distribution all over Europe, and is found in Switzerland at all altitudes, suiting itself to all temperatures. Wherever there is a chalet under the eaves of which it can build, there it is to be found as soon as spring has begun to appear, even though the snow is lying all around. I have found it myself nesting in chalets before the herdsmen and cows had arrived there, and at a height of 6000 feet or more, it has woke me at dawn with its song: yet at the same time it is abounding in the plains of France and Germany, and nowhere have I seen greater numbers than in the park at Luxembourg. It is one of the puzzles of ornithology, that in spite of this, the bird never comes to England in the summer; and that the stragglers that do visit us always appear as winter visitants; straying to our foggy shores as if by mistake, when they ought to be on their way to the sunny south.

The little ‘Röthel,’ as they call him, is a great favourite with the Swiss peasantry; he is trustful and musical, and will sing sometimes when you are within a few feet of him. They are sorry to part with him in autumn, and cannot make out what becomes of him. One of them told me that twenty-two of these birds were once found in the winter fast asleep in a cluster, like swarming bees, in the hollow-trunk of a cherry-tree; how far the story was mythical, I will not venture to say.

The Swallow tribe have been with us all the way along the valley, but they will follow us no further. Even at Engelberg (3500 feet) they seem to be a little chilly in the early summer. When I first arrived there, in cold weather, there was not a Swift to be seen; but one morning when I woke I heard them screaming, and afterwards I always knew a fine morning by the sound of their voices. Higher up, when we leave the highest limits of region No. 1, we shall see neither Swift, Martin, nor Swallow, and nothing is more striking on the ‘Alps,’ than the sense that you have left these birds of summer behind you. The highest point at which I saw a swallow last summer was at the glacier of the Rhone, where Anderegg pointed me out a single straggler as a curiosity: but later in the year they are probably bolder. Their place is taken in regions Nos. 2 and 3 by two other species, by no means common, and of great interest – the Alpine Swift and the Crag-martin. I have not found the latter in the district of which we are speaking, but he is always to be seen in a place well-known to most travellers in Switzerland – the steep descent of the Gemmi, to Leukerbad. As you wind down those tremendous precipices, you will see a little ghostly bird flitting up and down them, something after the manner of a bat, and reminding you of our Sand-martin – this is the Crag-martin, which spends the summer here, and builds in the crevices of the rocks. In the same place and others of the kind, you may see the Alpine Swift, whose flight is probably faster than that of any European bird; a splendid sight it is to watch him wheeling in the sunshine, borne along on wings that expand to a width of nearly two feet.

I have already strayed away from the valley to speak of these birds, and it is time that we should ascend to region No. 2, by the well-known path to the south of Engelberg. Just at the foot of the hill, where the path begins to mount, you may hear an unfamiliar note; it is that of the Pied Flycatcher, a bird not unfrequently seen in England, but welcome under all circumstances. As we go upwards through the wood, we hear very few birds: but as we suddenly emerge on a grassy slope between the pines, a large bird comes sailing high over us, with large brown outstretched wings, which we may believe is a Golden Eagle, so grave and silent its flight, so huge its outline against the sky. After half-an-hour’s walk we come out upon the Alps proper, i. e. the flowery pastures which form the bulk of region No. 2. Here the bird-life begins very sensibly to change. The Swallows, as I have said, do not venture so high: of the warblers, the only one left is the Chiff-chaff, which sings its familiar two notes in the underwood far up on the steep slopes above us. We are now on the ‘Pfaffenwand,’ a very steep and stony ascent separating the lower from the higher pastures; and here each year this tiny little bird seems to choose for his haunt, and perhaps for his nesting-place, the very highest bit of real cover, consisting only of stunted bushes, that he can find in all this district. Here, too, we are not unlikely to find a flock of Alpine Choughs; noisy chattering birds, with yellow beaks, strong and stout and with a downward curve; their legs are bright red and their plumage a bright and glossy black. The Cornish Chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus, Linn.), is also found in the Alps, but it is much less common; it is a larger bird, and its bill, which is long and red, is very different from the shorter and stouter yellow beak of the smaller species. The Alpine Chough is the characteristic corvus of the Alps, as it is also of the Apennines, and its lively chatter, breaking suddenly on vast and silent solitudes, recalls to memory the familiar jackdaw we left behind us in the Broad Walk at Oxford, or in the tower of our old village church.

But as I think of those delicious pastures, nestling under the solemn precipices, and studded in June with gentians, primulas, anemones, where each breath of crystal air is laden with the aromatic scent of Alpine herbage, I seem to hear one favourite song resounding far and near – a song given high in air, and often by an invisible singer; for so huge is the mass of mountain around us, that he seldom projects himself against the sky in his flight, and may well escape the quickest eye. But he is never many minutes together on the wing, and will soon descend to perch on some prominent object, the very top twig of a pine, or a bit of rock amid the Alpine roses —