A Year with the Birds

Those quivering wings composed, that music still.

His nest is not far off, and may sometimes be stumbled on in the grass and fern. This blithe spirit of the flowery pastures is the Water Pipit (Anthus spinoletta, Linn.), a little gray and brown bird somewhat more distinctly marked than our English Pipits, having a lightish stripe over the eye, whitish breast, and black legs; but in other respects much like his relations, both in habits and in his song, which is a long succession of clear bell-like notes, slackening somewhat in rapidity and force as he descends. He has very rarely been found in England, but may possibly be commoner than we fancy. Should I ever meet with him, he will surely carry me back in fancy to his true home among the Alps, where in the common speech of the peasants he is no longer a prosaic Pipit, but as he may well be called, the Alpine Lark.22

Another bird which haunts this region, though not in such numbers, and whose habits are much like those of the Water Pipit, is the Alpine Accentor. This belongs to a family (Accentoridae) which has only one other representative in Western Europe – our own familiar little Dunnock or Hedge-sparrow. In plumage and song the two are not unlike, though the Alpine bird is rather larger and of a more variegated warm brown colouring: but I cannot help pausing for one moment to point out the remarkable instance that we have here of two very closely allied birds developing habits of life so entirely distinct, – the one being stationary, the other migratory; the one breeding in the road-side hedge where it lives all the year, and the other retreating to the highest limits of the Alpine pastures and making its nest in the holes of the rocks. In the winter however the Alpine bird descends to the valleys, and there finds it convenient to associate more closely with man and his works; in the Hasli-thal it is known as the ‘Bliem-trittel,’ a term which Anderegg explained to me as meaning that it regales itself on the seeds of the flowers and grass which escape through the timbers of the chalet-built hay-barns. Thus it lives on two distinct diets in summer and winter; for in summer it feeds chiefly on the innumerable small beetles of the pastures, while in winter it is driven to become a vegetarian.

As our time is running short, we will now cross the snow-covered Joch, a pass barely high enough to bring us well into region No. 3, and drop down on the exquisite Engstlen-alp with its comfortable inn (6000 feet), whence we can climb to the highest region at any time with ease: this well-watered and well-timbered Alp being so placed that it stands nearly at the top of region No. 2, with easy access to No. 3, and affords us another glimpse at the former before we finally leave it.

As we sit at lunch after our walk, there faces us exactly opposite the window of the salle-à-manger, at a distance of a few yards, a little dark-brown hay-chalet; always a picturesque object, whether it stands out on a clear day against the mighty distant mass of the Wetterhörner, or looms huge and uncertain in the swirls of a mountain mist. This old friend of fourteen years’ standing gained a new interest for me on my last visit. Every now and then a pair of little greenish-yellow birds would come and twitter on its roof, or pick up seeds and insects from beneath its raised floor. I took these at first for the Serin-finch, the well-known favourite cage-bird of the continent, and the near relation of the Canary and of our English Siskin. I had no wish to shoot such trustful and beautiful creatures, and therefore remained in ignorance of their true nature till I returned to England, when I found from Dresser’s work that they must have been not the Serin but the Citril-finch. The two are closely allied, but the Serin seems to content itself with the valleys and plains of region No. 1, while its place is taken in the mountains by its cousin. Mr. Dresser has an interesting account of a successful search for it on the highest summit of the Black Forest. It builds its nest in the pine branches, but may always be looked out for near chalets or palings at a considerable height, which it ransacks for food; and an elaborate search for its nest which I made in the chalet was a wild-goose chase into which I find that more distinguished ornithologists have been misled before me.

If we now stroll out across this beautiful alp to the lake which bounds and waters it, we shall find it alive with birds. Besides the Pipits and the Accentors, there are families of young Ring-ousels and Missel-thrushes, which have evidently been born and brought up near at hand; Wheatears, of our English species, are perched on the big stones that lie about, and in the ancient pines above them you may now and then see a Crossbill or a Redpoll. In the broad stream that issues from the lake you will always see the Dipper, and associated with it is the Grey Wagtail, seemingly the only bird of its kind that affects the higher Alps; for the White Wagtail seems to stay in the valleys even in the summer, and to love the larger streams and the farmyard pool; and the other species which I might have expected to meet, the Blue-headed Wagtail (Motacilla flava, Linn.), did not once offer himself to my field-glass, nor did his near relative, our common Yellow Wagtail of spring and summer.

But it is time that we should leave the pastures and make an expedition into the higher region of rock and snow. There is of course but little bird-life there, but that little is interesting. The best way is to go straight up the steep grass-slopes to the north-west of the inn, which are carpeted in June with millions of fragrant pansies and gentians, until we arrive, after a climb of some 1500 feet, at a little hollow filled with snow and limestone boulders, and having on one side a precipitous wall of rock, and on the other a series of upward-sloping stretches of snow, interspersed with patches of rock and short grass. Early in the season, when this desolate region is still quite undisturbed, you may find occupation if you lie in wait awhile. In my first walk here, no sooner did I reach this hollow, than a badger got up about ten yards from me and shuffled away behind some boulders; and while following up his tracks over the snow, I found them crossing and recrossing the ‘spur’ of chamois. A little further on, I saw the Ptarmigan creeping about among the rocks, and very soon I heard the call of the Snow-finches. These birds, who thus live and breed almost within the limits of perpetual snow, might be supposed, as Gould says of them, to ‘dwell in unmolested security.’ I was soon able to judge of the accuracy of his statement, for as soon as I had caught sight of them with the field-glass, I saw that something was causing anxiety to the little family. It was their alarm-call that I had heard; and as I was cautiously watching them fluttering on or close to the ground, I suddenly saw a small red fox make a hungry dash upon them, startling me and causing me for the moment unwittingly to move the glass and lose the whole scene. When I found them again the fox was gone, the finches were greatly troubled, and I fear there is no doubt that he secured a dinner.

The Snow-finch is a beautiful bird, rather larger than a Green-finch or Sparrow, with long wings in which the primary quill-feathers are much longer than the rest, as in some other birds, of airy and graceful flight. The strong contrast of jet-black and purest white in the plumage, e. g. in the tail, which has two black feathers in the middle while the rest are as white as snow, makes the bird conspicuous at a long distance, and a more striking object than the browner Snow-bunting, which occasionally strays from the north to the Alps. Seldom have I seen a more beautiful sight, unless it be a flight of Plover on English water-meadows, than the wavings and whirlings of a flock of Snow-finches, with their white feathers glistening in the sun one moment, while the next their black ones will show clear against the snow.

One other bird, which loves these great heights in the summer, may occasionally be seen within a few minutes’ walk of the place where the Snow-finch fell a victim. This is the red-winged Rock- or Wall-creeper, a bird so beautiful and so unique that it demands at least a passing notice. Wherever there is a steep wall or rock which is in shadow during part at least of the day, this bird may be looked for and occasionally seen, even in the midst of a snow-field or a glacier;23 for when the rock is exposed to the sun, the heat generated is too great either to allow the bird to work, or the insects it seeks to remain in the crevices. To those who have not seen it, it may best be described as in shape almost exactly like our common little Tree-creeper, the only other European representative of the family, but larger, and instead of its cousin’s sober brown plumage, presenting such an exquisite contrast of colour as is hardly to be found even among the fauna of the tropics. Its head, neck, and back, are soft ash-gray, and when its wings are closed you would hardly distinguish it from the gray rock to which it clings; but in an instant, as it begins half to climb and half to flutter from crevice to crevice, you will see the brilliant crimson of its lesser quill-feathers standing out, not unlike the underwings of a well-known moth, against that delicate gray. Its bill is long and slender, but strange to say, it is without the long tongue, that wonderful far-darter, with which the wood-peckers are provided; so the insects which it seeks in the crevices have to be rummaged for with the bill itself, and conveyed in some mysterious manner to the tongue, which does not reach much more than half way down it. Perhaps this may partly account for a statement made to me by Anderegg, and positively insisted on by him, that the bird loses the end of its bill every autumn, regaining it in the course of the winter. I am not in a position either to accept or refute this story. Anderegg declared that he had sent Professor Fatio specimens in order to prove it; but the Professor, who has studied the bird carefully, has not, so far as I know, drawn attention to any such peculiarity. I am inclined to think the truth may lie in the liability of the bird to wear away or even break the tip of its bill in the course of its indefatigable efforts to obtain food, and I have seen a specimen in the Bern Museum whose broken bill may possibly be a confirmation of this explanation. The peasant mind is apt enough to elevate an accidental circumstance into a law of nature.

We must now leave region No. 3 altogether, and descend from the Engstlen-alp westwards towards the Hasli-thal, passing through long stretches of the pine-forests which so often separate the upper pastures from the valleys. There are two families of birds to be met with in these forests, of which I must say a very few words, – the Woodpeckers and the Titmice. The former are not abundant, and it needs much patience to find them. I was to have visited a nesting-place of the Great Black Woodpecker (that awe-inspiring bird, which has borne its name of Picus Martius ever since it was the prophetic bird of Mars24), but fate decreed that I should have to go that day in an opposite direction. The three Spotted Woodpeckers – great, middle, and lesser – all occur, but our familiar green bird, which does not seem at home among the pines, is less common. Rarest of all is the Three-toed Woodpecker, with yellow head, which dwells – so Anderegg told me, and I find from the books that he was right – only among the highest and most solitary pine-woods.

At intervals, as in an English wood, the trees will be astir with Titmice. The Cole-tit and the Marsh-tit, the Blue-tit and the Great-tit, are all to be seen here, the last two undistinguishable from the British form, while the Cole-tit has a bluer back than ours, and the Marsh-tit in these higher levels differs, according to Professor Fatio, even from the same bird when found lower down, and approaches rather to the Scandinavian form. This single fact is enough to show how interesting would be a persevering study of this particular family. I will not venture to say whether these slight differences in plumage are enough to justify a specific separation of the forms. In the case of the continental Long-tailed Tit, which is decidedly different in colouring from ours, even amateurs may perhaps see a sufficient reason; but will prefer to suspend their judgment as to the other two.

There is yet a Titmouse, nearly always to be heard and seen between the Engstlen-alp and the Gentelthal, which is even more attractive to the ornithologist than any of its cousins. This is the Crested-tit (Lophophancs cristatus, Linn.), now so rare even in Scotland, and, according to Anderegg, not too common even in these pine-forests. It needs a vigilant eye and ear to detect it, so closely does it resemble its relatives (and especially the Blue species) both in voice and appearance, until you catch the well-marked crest on the head, and the additional shade of melancholy in the note. So close indeed are this bird and the Blue-tit in form, habits, and note, that I am astonished that the crest by itself (a few feathers raised on the head) should have been thought a sufficiently strong character to raise it into a separate genus —Lophophanes. If we notice the Blue-tit carefully, we shall find that he also often elevates his head-feathers into something like a crest; imagine this a little larger, and the bright colouring of the Blue-tit sobered into a soft bluish gray, and you will get a very good idea of the appearance of the male Crested-tit. His lady is brown rather than gray, causing Anderegg to make one of those mistakes to which the peasant-naturalist is liable; he assured me that there were two species, answering to the two prevailing tints.

I never can forget the spot where my old friend’s sharp ear first caught for me the quiet note of these little birds. If any bird-lover should chance to walk from Engstlen down to the Hasli-thal, he should stop near the foot of the first rapid descent among the pines, where the stream which he has lately crossed tumbles over a ledge of rock into a deep dark pool. At the very edge of this pool stand a few black pine-trees, and among the thick branches of these the Tits were playing. Above us were vast mountain walls, and at our feet was the mossy grass, damp with the spray of the fall; among the gray boulders the alpine rhododendron was coming into bloom. At a little distance a robin was singing its ever-welcome song, mingling its English music with the sound of alpine cow-bells from the pasture further down the valley. Such scenes linger for ever in the memory, and are endeared to us by the thought of the blithe creatures who live and sport among them during a long golden summer, long after we have returned to the land of misty meadows and miry ways.

But we must now leave these woods and pastures, and descend to the deep valley of the Hasli-thal, where we shall end our journey at Meiringen. If, instead of following the ordinary path, we skirt along the heights to the north towards Hasliberg, and so keep in cooler air, enjoying endless views, we shall finally descend by a very steep winding path, which is the only means of communication between the population of the valley and that of the higher slopes. In the willows and hazels among which this path winds, and also on the opposite side of the valley on the way to Rosenlaui, I have always heard a little warbler whose voice was quite strange to me. More than once I have done all I could to obtain a good sight of it; but the restless caprice of these little birds, who flit rapidly in and out of the bushes while the ornithologist waits with his head in a burning sun, only to lose sight of the tiny creature the moment the glass is upon him, defeated my purpose of finding out his species beyond the possibility of error; and Anderegg was as unwilling to use his gun so near the village, as I should have been to sacrifice a joyous life to the spirit of curiosity. But I have every reason to believe that my little tormentors belonged to a species with which I shall hope some day to make a closer acquaintance; it bears the name of the Italian naturalist Bonelli, and is a very near relation of our friends the Chiff-chaff and Willow-wren (Phylloscopus Bonnellii, Vieill.).25

Our walk is now ended, and this chapter is already quite long enough. Were we to take another, we might see many other species not less interesting than those we have met with on the way from Stanz-stadt; we might find Hawks of several species, Nutcrackers in the pine-woods, the Golden Oriole, the Hoopoe, or the beautiful Blue-breast. But I have thought it better to be content, for the most part, with the birds I have actually met with in the walk we have chosen to take, rather than to furnish a catalogue of all those we might be lucky enough to meet with if we stayed some weeks in the country. And thus I hope I may have given my readers some little idea of the impression left by the birds of a well-known alpine district on the memory of a rather hurried traveller, who has not been always able to go or to stay as his own inclination would prompt him.

CHAPTER IV.

A MIDLAND VILLAGE: GARDEN AND MEADOW

It is a curious fact that, when I return from Switzerland, that I am at first unable to discover anything in our English midlands but a dead level of fertile plain. The eye has accustomed itself in the course of two or three weeks to expect an overshadowing horizon of rock and snow, and when that is removed, it fails to perceive the lesser differences of height. This fact is an excellent illustration of the abnormal condition of things in the Alps, affecting the life both of the plants and animals which inhabit them; and it also shows us how very slight are the differences of elevation in most parts of our own island. In ordinary weather, the temperature does not greatly differ in an English valley and on an English ridge of hill, and the question whether their fauna and flora vary, is one rather of soil than of temperature. Still, there are manifest differences to be observed as we proceed from river-valleys to rising wooded ground, and from this again to a bare hill-side; and it may be interesting, after our walk in the Alps, to note the bird-life of an English rural district which is provided with all three, recalling dimly and perhaps fancifully the three regions of the Alpine world.

The traveller by railway from Oxford to Worcester leaves the broad meadows of the Isis about three miles above Oxford, and after crossing a spur of higher land, strikes the little river Evenlode at Handborough Station, not far from its junction with the Isis at Cassington. This Evenlode is the next considerable stream westward of the Cherwell, and just as the line of the latter is followed by the Birmingham railway, so the line to Worcester keeps closely to the Evenlode for nearly twenty miles, only leaving it at last in its cradle in the uplands of Worcestershire. Westward again of the Evenlode, the Windrush comes down from the northern Cotswolds, to join the Isis at Witney, and further still come Leach, and Coln, and others, bringing the clear cold water in which trout delight, from the abundant springs at Northleach and Andoversford. But the Evenlode is not a Cotswold stream, though trout may still be caught in it where it has not been polluted; it skirts for many miles the north-eastern slope of the Cotswolds, which may be seen from the train-windows closing in the horizon all the way from Shipton-under-Wychwood to Evesham and Worcester, but it has the slow current and muddy bottom of a lowland stream, and runs throughout its course among water-meadows liable to flood.

For the first few miles of its course it is little more than a ditch; but shortly after passing the historic lawns of Daylesford, it is joined by two other streams, one descending from the slope of the Cotswolds, and the other from the high ground of Chipping Norton eastwards. These two join the Evenlode exactly at the point where it enters Oxfordshire, and the combination produces a little river of some pretension, which enjoys a somewhat more rapid descent for some miles from this junction, and almost prattles as it passes the ancient abbey-lands of Bruerne and the picturesque spire of Shipton church.

Close to the point of junction, on a long tongue of land which is a spur of Daylesford hill, and forms a kind of promontory bounded by the meadows of the Evenlode and the easternmost of its two tributaries, lies the village where much of my time is spent in vacations. It is more than four hundred feet above the sea, and the hills around it rise to double that height; but it lies in an open country, abounding in corn, amply provided with hay-meadows by the alluvial deposit of the streams already mentioned, and also within easy reach of long stretches of wild woodland. For all along the valley the observant passenger will have been struck with the long lines of wood which flank the Evenlode at intervals throughout its course; he passes beneath what remains of the ancient forest of Wychwood, and again after a considerable gap he has the abbey-woods of Bruerne on his left, and once more after an interval of cultivation his view is shut in by the dense fox-covers of Bledington and Oddington, the border villages of Gloucestershire. It is just at this interval between Bruerne and Bledington that the junction of the two streams with the Evenlode takes place; so that from this point, or from the village already spoken of, it is but a short distance to an ample and solitary woodland either up or down the valley. Beyond that woodland lies a stretch of pasture land which brings you to the foot of the long ridge of hill forming the north-eastern boundary and bulwark of the Cotswolds, and hiding from us the little old-world towns of Burford and Northleach. We have therefore within a radius of five or six miles almost every kind of country in which birds rejoice to live. We have water-meadow, corn-land, woods, and hills, and also here and there a few acres of scrubby heath and gorse; and the only requisite we lack is a large sheet of water or marshy ground, which might attract the waders and sea-birds so commonly found near Oxford. We are neither too far north to miss the southern birds, nor too far south to see the northern ones occasionally; we might with advantage be a little farther east, but we are not too far west to miss the Nightingale from our coverts.

Such a position and variety would be sure to produce a long list of birds, both residents and visitors; not only because there are localities at hand suited to be their dwelling-places during the whole or a part of the year, but because they offer the change of scene and food which is essential to the welfare of many species. An open country of heath and common will not abound in birds of more than a very few species, unless it is varied with fertile oases, with garden, orchard, or meadow; for many of the birds that delight to play about in the open, and rove from place to place during the first few months of their existence, will need for their nests and young the shelter of trees and shrubs. While the young are growing, they require incessant feeding, and the food must be at hand which they can best assimilate and digest; and it does not follow that this is the same as that which the parents habitually eat, or which the young themselves will most profit by when they are fledged. The relation between the movements of birds and their food is a problem which has not, so far as I know, been fully investigated as yet. Other problems of absorbing interest at present occupy the attention of men of science. The sure foothold which has been gained by the theory of development has placed the great questions of classification in a new light, and brought the structure of animals into the foreground; the microscope each year discovers new wonders in the development of that structure from the earliest visible germ of life, and the habits of the living animal,26 and the relations of animals to each other, have consequently fallen a little into the background. No ornithological researches, so far as I am aware, have been lately published in this country, which can compare with those of Sir J. Lubbock on the intelligence of insects. Birds are in fact an extremely difficult subject for minute study; abundant leisure at the proper season, indefatigable perseverance, and the means and opportunity of travel, are its necessary conditions, which are denied to most men. And, it must be added, a considerable sacrifice of the life and happiness of birds is another sine qua non of investigations of this kind; and thus the growing sensitiveness of cultivated men is brought into conflict with the ardour of the enthusiastic savant.