ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS - W.H.HUDSON -- FOR THE PEOPLE FOR EDVCATION FOR SCIENCE LIBRARY OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS BY THE SAME AUTHOR A SHEPHERD'S LIFE THE PURPLE LAND A CRYSTAL AGE IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA A NATURALIST IN LA PLATA BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS / BY W. H. HUDSON AUTHOR OF "far AWAY AKD L(JNG AGO,'' "tHE PURPLE LAND," "a SUKPRERD's UFE," "idle DAYS IN PATAGONIA," KTC. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 68i FIFTH AVENUE 1920 Published, 1920, by E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY All Rights Reserved ^O.flottlYnau^'Xt The Illustrations in this Volume are Reproductions of the Original Woodcuts from "A History of British Birds" by Bewick (1826). Printed in the United States of America A CONSIDERABLE portion of the matter contained herein has appeared in the English Review, Cornhill Magazine, Saturday Review, Nation, and a part of one chapter in the Morning Post. These articles have been altered and extended, and I am obliged to the Editors and Publishers for permission to use them in this book. Once I wag part of the music I heard On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky, For joy of the beating of wings on high My heart shot into the breast of a bird. I hear it now and I see it fly, And a life in wrinkles again la stirred. My heart shoots into the breast of a bird, As It will for sheer love till the last long sigh. MXBEDITH. VI CONTENTS CHAPTER I. The Book: An Apology . PAGE I II. Cardinal: The Story of my First Caged Bird . . . . 12 III. Wells-next-the-Sea, where Wild Geese Congregate 25 IV. Great Bird Gatherings 34 V. Birds in Authority 43 VI. A Wood by the Sea 57 VII. Friendship in Animals . 65 VIII. The Sacred Bird . . . . 84 IX. A Tired Traveller {Turdus iliacus). 94 X. White Duck 103 XI. An Impression of Axe Edge . 116 XII. Birds of the Peak 124 XIII. The Ring-Ouzel as a Songster 132 XIV. Bird Music .... 140 XV. In a Green Country in Quest of Rare Songsters vii 149 viil CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XVI. In a Hampshire Village 159 XVII. The Furze-Wren or Furze-Fairy . 168 XVIII. Back to the West Country 177 XIX. Avalon and a Blackbird i8s XX. The Lake Village 195 XXL The Marsh Warbler's Music 204 XXII. Goldfinches at Ryme Intrinsica 217 XXIII. The Immortal Nightingale . • 233 XXIV. The Clerk and the Last Ravens • 253 XXV. The Temples of the Hills . . 263 XXVI. Autumn, 191 2 . 283 XXVII. Wild Wings: A Farewell . 298 Index . 315 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Thi: Goldln-Crhsted Wren I The Mouxtaix Finch 12 The White-Fronted Wild Goose ... 25 The Bullfinch 34 The Swallow 43 The Black-FIeaded Gull 57 The Mute Swan 65 The Pheasant 84 The Redwing 94 The Eider Duck 103 The Golden Plover 116 The Cuckoo 124 The Ring-Ouzel 132 The Chaffinch 140 The Golden Oriole 149 The Long-Eared Owl 159 The Yellow Wren 168 The Lapwing 177 k X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Blackbird 185 The Heron 19S The Hedge Warbler 204 The Goldfinch 217 The Nightingale 233 The Raven 253 The Peregrine Falcon 263 The Sparrow 283 The Fieldfare 298 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS The GoLutN- Crested Wren CHAPTER I The Book: an Apology The book-buyer in search of something to read before making his purchase as a rule opens a book and glances at a few lines on the first page, just to get the flavour of it and find out whether or not it suits his palate. The title, we must presume, has already attracted him as indicating a subject which interests him. This habit of his gives me the opportunity of warning him at the very outset that he will find here no adventures of a wild-fowler, if that's what he is seeking; no thrilling 2 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS records of long nights passed in a punt, with a north wind blowing and freezing him to the marrow in spite of his thick woollen clothing and long boots and oil- skins, and the glorious conclusion of the adventure when he happily succeeds in sending a thousand pellets of burning lead into an innumerable multitude of mallard, widgeon, teal, pochard, and pintail; how for several successive winters he repeated the operation until the persecuted fowl began to diminish so greatly in num- bers that he forsook that estuary or haunt on the coast to follow them elsewhere, or transferred his attentions to some other far-distant point, where other wholesale killers had not been before him. No, this is not a sport- ing record, despite the title, and if long titles were the fashion nowadays, it would have been proper to call the book "The Adventures of a Soul, sensitive or not, among the feathered masterpieces of creation." This would at all events have shown at once whence the title was derived, and would have better served to indicate the nature of the contents. It all comes to this, that we have here another book about birds, which demands some sort of apology. In England, a small country, we have not too many species — two or three hundred, let us say, according to the number of visitants we include or exclude; all ex- ceedingly well known. For birds are observed more than any other class of creatures, and we are not only an observant but a book-writing people, and books have been written on this subject since the time of Queen Elizabeth — as a fact the first book (1544) was before THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 3 her time — and lor the hist century have been produced at axi ever-increasing rate until now, when we have them t-urned out by the dozens every year. All about the same few well-known birds! To many among us it seems that the thing is being over-done. One friend expostulates thus: "What, another book about birds? You have already written several — three or four or five — I can't remember the number. I don't know much about the subject, but I should have thought you had already told us all you know about it. I had hoped you had hnished with that subject now. There are so many others — Man, for instance, who is of more account than many sparrows. Well, all I can say is, I'm sorry." If he had known birds, I doubt that he would have expressed regret at my choice of a subject; for many as are the observers of birds and writers on them in the land, there are yet a far greater number who do not properly know them, and the joy they are or may be to us. The people who discover birds are now common with us, and tliough the story of their discoveries is some- what boring, it amuses at the same time. A lady of your acquaintance tells you the result of putting some crumbs on a window-sill — the sudden appearance to feed on the crumbs of a quaint fairy-like little bird which was not a sparrow, nor robin, nor any of those common ones, but a sparkling lively little creature with a crest, all blue above and yellow beneath — very beautiful to look at, and fantastic in its actions. A bird she has never seen before though all her life has been passed in the 4 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS country. Was it some rare visitor from a distant land, where birds have a brighter plumage and livelier habits than ours? Two or three years ago a literary friend wrote to me from the north of England, where he had gone for a holiday and was staying at a farm, to say that he wished me there, if only to see a wonderful bird that visited the house every day. It was probably a species, he thought, confined to that part of the country, and perhaps never seen in the south, and he wanted very much to know what it was. As I couldn't go to him he would try to describe it. Every morning after breakfast, when he and his people fed the birds on the lawn, this strange species, to the number of a dozen or more, would appear on the scene — a bird about the size of a thrush with a long sharp yellow beak, the entire plumage of a very dark purple and green colour, so glossy that it sparkled like silver in the sunshine. They were also sprinkled all over with minute white and cream-coloured spots. A beautiful bird, and very curious in its behaviour. They would dart down on the scraps, scattering the sparrows right and left, quarrelling among themselves over the best pieces ; and then, when satisfied, they would fly up to the roof and climb and flit about over the tiles and on the chimneys, puffing their feathers out and mak- ing all sorts of odd noises — whistling, chattering, tinkling, and so on. I replied that the birds were starlings, and he was rather unhappy about it, since he had known the starling as a common bird all his life, and had imagined he THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 5 knew it too well to take it for a strange and rare species. But then, he confessed, he had never looked chjscly at it; he liad seen it in (locks in the pastures, always at a distance where it looks i)lain hlack. If the lady who discovered the blue-tit, or nun, and my friend who found out the starling, would extend their researches in the feathered world they would find a hundred other species as beautiful in colouring and deliglitful in their ways as those two, and some even more so. Much, too, might be said on the subject of many books being written about birds. They are not neces- sarily repetitions. When a writer of fact or fiction puts his friends and acquaintances in a book, as a rule it makes a difference, a decline, in the degree of cordiality in their relations. That is only, of course, when the reader recognizes himself in the portrait. He may not do so, portraits not always being "pure realism," as Mr. Stanhope Forbes says they are. But whether the reader recognizes his own picture or not, the writer himself experiences a change of feeling towards his sub- ject. It is, to put it brutally, similar to that of the boy towards the sucked orange. There is nothing more to be got out of it. It need not be supposed for a moment that the fictionist is friendly towards or interested in his fellow-creatures for the sake of what he can get out of them — that, like the portrait-painter, he is on the look-out for a subject. He has no such unworthy motive, and the change in his feeling comes about in another way. Having built up his picture he looks on 6 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS it and finds it an improvement, and infinitely more in- teresting than the original, and the old feeling inevitably changes — it is transferred from the man to the picture. These changes in feeling never occur in the case of the feathered friends we have made, and find pleasure in portraying. We may put them again and again in books without experiencing any diminution in our feelings to- wards them. On the contrary, after doing our best we no sooner look again on the originals than we see how bad the portrait is, and would be glad to put it out of sight and forget all about it. This lustre, this peculiar grace, this expression which I never marked before, is not in the picture I have made; come, let me try again, though it be but to fail again, to produce yet another painting fit only for the lumber-room. After all it does not need a naturalist nor an artist nor a poet to appreciate and be the better for that best thing in a wild bird, that free, joyous, joy-giving nature felt by every one of us. The sight of a wild, free, happy existence, as far as the fairies or angels from ours, yet linked to us by its warm red blood, its throb- bing human-shaped heart, fine senses, and intelligent mind, emotions that sway it as ours sway us. A relative, a "little sister," but clothed for its glory and joy in feathers that are hard as flint, light as air and trans- lucent, and wings to lift it above the earth on which we walk. Is there on earth a human being who has not felt this ? Not one ! I remember going once to see a member of a county council to try to enlist his interest in the subject of THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 7 bird protection lor his county. 1 was tuld tluit he was the biggest man on the council and had immense weight with his fellow-members on account of his wealth ;uid social position, that without getting him on our side it would be difficult to obtain an order. He was cer- tainly a big man physically, a very giant in stature, with a tread like that of an elephant when he entered the vast dim room into which a servant had conducted me. So huge a mass, so heavy and stolid, as he stood there silently staring at me out of his great expressionless boiled-goosebcrry-coloured eyes, waiting to hear what I had to say to him. I said it, and handed him some papers, which I wanted him to look at. But he was not listening, and when I finished he held out the papers for me to take diem back. "No," he said, "I have too many calls on me — I can't entertain it." "Will you kindly listen," I said, then repeated it again, and he muttered something and taking the papers once more inclined his head to indicate that the interview was over, and, thank- ing him for his ready sympathy, I went my way to some one else. My next visit was to an enthusiastic sportsman. I told him where I had been, and he exclaimed that it was a mistake, a waste of time. "That chunk of a man is no good," he said. "If he sees a roast goose on the table he knows what it is and he can distinguish it from a roast turkey, and that's all he knows about birds.'* Perhaps it was all he knew, from the natural history point of view at all events; yet even this "chunk of a man" had doubtless felt something of that common 8 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS universal joy in a bird, which makes the bird so much to us, for by-and-by it was with his help that the order for the county was obtained. Here is a little incident in which we can see just the feeling a bird is able to inspire in us. A friend writes to me: "I have just heard from Miss Paget, who says her most interesting news is the visit of a gold-crested wren at the Connaught Hospital. It flew in through one of the open windows and at once became friendly with the patients, perching on their fingers and being fed by them to their great delight. Then, having cheered them for a day and night, it flew away and has not been seen since. The men long for its return, for nothing has pleased and refreshed and brightened them so much in their wearisome hours as its companionship." Miss Rosalind Paget is so well-known for her work in the military hospitals that I hope she will forgive me for giving her name without her permission when re- lating this incident. But the effect of the bird is due as much to the voice as to the dainty winged shape, the harmonious colouring, and the graceful easy motions in the air. That peculiar aerial vibrant penetrative character of bird-notes moves us as other sounds do not, and there are certain notes in which these qualities are intensified and sometimes suggest an emotion common to all mankind, which pierce to the listener's heart, whatever his race or country may be or his character or pursuits in life. I here recall an incident of my young days in a far land, less civilized than ours. I had a neighbour in THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 9 my home for wliom I had hltlc love. He was a greedy rascal, a petty rural magistrate with an itching palm, and if justice was required at his hands it had to be bought with money like any other commodity. One summer afternoon he rode over to my home and asked me to go for a walk with him by the river. It was a warm brilliant day in early autumn, and when we had walked about a couple of miles along the bank to a spot where the stream was about fifty yards wide, we sat down on the dry grass under a large red willow. A flock of birds was in the tree — a species of a most loquacious kind — but our approach had made them silent. Not the faintest chirp fell from the branches that had been full of their musical jangle a few minutes before. It was a species of troupial, a starling-like bird of social habits, only larger than our starling, with glossy olive- brown plumage and brilliant yellow breast. Pecho amarillo (yellow breast) is its vernacular name. Now as soon as we had settled comfortably on the grass the entire flock, of thirty or forty birds, sprang up into the air, going up out of the foliage like a fountain, then suddenly they all together dropped down, and sweep- ing by us over the water burst into a storm of loud ringing jubilant cries and lifjuid notes. My companion uttered a sudden strange harsh discordant laugh, and turning away his sharp dry fox-like face, too late to hide the sudden moisture 1 had seen in his eyes, he exclaimed with savage emphasis on the first word — "Curse the little birds — how^ glad they are !" That was his way of blessing them. He was a hard- lo ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS ened rascal, utterly bad, feared and hated by the poor, despised by his equals; yet the sight and sound of that merry company, its sudden outburst of glorious joy, had wrought an instantaneous change in him that was like a miracle, and for a moment he was no longer him- self, but what he had been in the past, in some un- imaginably remote period of his existence, a pure-hearted child, capable of a glad, beautiful emotion and of tears. I will remark in passing that the actual words of his blessing are hardly translatable; for he didn't call them "Httle birds," but addressed them affectionately as fel- low-mortals of diminutive size — "little children of a thousand unvirtuous mothers" was more nearly his ex- pression. One is reminded of a famous historical incident — of the exclamation of the dying Garibaldi, when a small bird of unrecorded species alighted for a moment on the ledge of his open window, and burst out into a lively twittering song. "Quanto e allegro!" murmured the old passing fighter. The exclamation would have seemed quite natural on the lips of a dying Englishman, but how strange on his! Does it find an echo in the heart of the people he liberated, who appreciate a bird not for its soul-gladdening voice but for its flavour? It can only be supposed that Garibaldi during his furious fight- ing years in the Argentine Confederation, in the forties of the last century, had become in some ways de-Italian- ized — that he had been infected with a friendly feeling towards birds of his fellow "pirates and ruffians" as they were called, and of the people generally, from his THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY ii enemy the Dictator Rosas himself, the "Nero of South America" down to the poorest gaucho in the land. They, the fighters, were mostly ruffians in those days in a country where revolution (with atrocities) was endemic, but they did not kill or persecute "God's little birds" as they called them. The foreigners who did such things were regarded with contempt. Garibaldi was beaten again and again, and finally driven from the Plate by a better fighter — an English- man of the name of Brown; but the beaten "pirate" lived to liberate his own country and to see his people going out annually in tens of thousands to settle in the land where he had fought and lost. How melancholy to think that from the bird-lover's point of view they have been a curse to it, that, but for the wealthy native and English landowners who are able to give some pro- tection to wild life on their estates, the detestable swarm of aliens would have made the land they have popu- lated as birdless as their native Italy. The Mountain Finch CHAPTER II Cardinal: the Story of My First Caged Bird A ONCE familiar but long unheard sound coming un- expectedly to us will sometimes affect the mind as it is occasionally affected through the sense of smell, re- storing a past scene and state so vividly that it is less like a memory than a vision. It is indeed more than a vision, seeing that this is an illusion, something ap- parently beheld with the outer or physical eyes ; the other is a transformation, a return to that state — that forgotten self — which was lost for ever, yet is ours again; and for a glorious moment we are what we were in some distant place, some long-vanished time, in age and fresh- ness of feeling, in the brilliance of our senses, our wonder and delight at this visible world. 12 CARDINAL: MY FIRST CAGED BIRD 13 Recently I had an experience of that kind on hearing a loud glad bird note or call from overhead when w.iik- ing in a London West-End thoroughfare. It made me start and stand still; when, casting up my eyes, I caught sight of the bird in its cage, hanging outside a first- floor window. It was the beautiful cardinal of many memories. This is a bird of the finch family of southern South America — about the size of a starling, but more grace- fully shaped, witli a longer tail ; the whole upper plumage clear blue-grey, the underparts pure white; the face, throat, and a high pointed crest an intense brilliant scarlet. It had actually seemed to me at the moment of hear- ing, then of seeing it, that the bird had recognised me as one from the same distant country — that its loud call was a glad greeting to a fellow-exile seen by chance in a London thoroughfare. It was even more than that: this was my own bird, dead so many, many years, living again, knowing me again so far from home, in spite of all tlie changes that time had wrought in me. And he, my own cardinal, the first cardinal I ever knew, re- membered it all even as I did — all the little incidents of our life together; the whole history was in both our minds at the same moment of recognition. I was a boy, not yet eight years old, when my mother took me on one of her yearly visits to Buenos Ayres. It was a very long day's journey for us in those pre- railroad times; for, great and prosperous as that city and republic now are, it was not so then, when the people 14 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS were divided, calling themselves Reds and Whites (or Blues), and were occupied in cutting one another's throats. In Buenos Ay res we stayed at the house of an English missionary clergyman, in a street near the waterside. He was a friend of my parents and used to come out with his family to us in the summer, and in return my mother made his house her home for a month or so in winter. This was my first visit, and I remember the house was like a luxurious palace to my simple mind accustomed to rude surroundings. It had a large paved courtyard, with ornamental shrubs and orange and lemon trees growing in it, and many prettily decorated rooms; also a long passage or balcony at the back, and, at its far end, facing the balcony, the door of the study. This balcony at the back had an irresistible attraction for me, for on the wall were hung many cages contain- ing beautiful birds, some unknown to me. There were several canaries, a European goldfinch, and other kinds; but the bird that specially attracted me was a cardinal in fine plumage, with a loud, glad, musical call-note — just such a note as that with which the bird in a London thoroughfare had pierced my heart. But it did not sing, and I was told that it had no song except that one note, or not more than two or three notes, and that it was kept solely for its beauty. To me it was certainly most beautiful. Every day during our six or seven weeks' visit I used to steal out to the balcony, and stand by the hour watch- ing the birds, above all the cardinal with his splendid CARDINAL: MY FIRST CAGED BIRD 15 scarlet crest, thinkinp^ of the j«^y it would be to possess such u bird. Uul thi)ut;h 1 couKl not keep away ffDiii the spot, I was always ill at case when there, always glancing apprehensively at the closed d(X)r at the end — for it was a glass door, and in his study behind it the clergyman, a grave studious man, was sitting over his books. It made me tremble to think that, though in- visible to me in that dim interior, he would be able to see me through tlie glass, and, worse still, that at any moment he might throw open the door and come out to catch me gazing at his birds. Nor was this feeling strange in the circumstances, for I was a timid, some- what sensitive little boy, and he a very big stern man with a large clean-shaved colourless face that had no friendliness in it; nor could I forget an unhappy incident which occurred during his visit to us in the country more than half a year before. One day, rushing in, I stumbled in the verandah and struck my head against the door-handle, and, falling down, was lying on the floor crying loudly with the pain, when the big stern man came on the scene. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded. "Oh, I've hit my head on the door and it hurts me so!" I sobbed. "Does it?" he said, with a grim smile. "Well, it doesn't hurt me," and, stepping over me, he went in. What wonder that I was apprehensive, would shrink almost in terror, when by chance he came suddenly out to find me there, and, after staring or glaring at me through his gold-rimmed glasses for a few moments, i6 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS would pass me by without a word or smile. How strange, how unnatural, it seemed that this man I feared and hated should be a lover of birds and the owner of that precious cardinal! The long visit came to an end at last, and, glad to return to the birds I had left — to the purple cow-birds, the yellow-breasted and the crimson-breasted troupials, the tyrant birds, the innumerable sweet-voiced little crested song-sparrows, and a hundred more — yet sad to leave the cardinal which I admired and had grown to love above all birds, I was taken back to my distant home on the great green plains. So passed the winter, and the swallow returned and the peach-trees blossomed once more; the long, long dry hot summer season fol- lowed; then autumn — the three beautiful months of March, April, and May, when the sunshine was soft and we were among the trees, feasting on ripe peaches every day and all day long. Then again winter and the annual visit to the distant town; but none of us children were taken on this occa- sion. My mother's return after one of these long ab- sences was always a great joy and festival to us children. To have her with us again, and the toys and the books and delicious things she brought us, made us wild with happiness; and on this occasion she brought me some- thing compared with which all the other gifts — all the gifts I had ever received in my life were as nothing. She had a large object covered from sight with a shawl, and, drawing me to her side, asked me if I remembered my visit to the city over a year ago, and how the birds CARDINAL: MY FIRST CAGED BIRD 17 at the parsonage had attracted mc? Well, our friend the clergyman, she went on to say, had gone back to his own country and would never return. His wife, who was a very gentle, sweet woman, had been my mother's dearest friend, so tliat she could hardly speak of her loss without tears. Before going away he dis- tributed his birds among his closest friends. He was anxious that every bird should have an owner who would love it as much as he had loved it himself and tend it as carefully; and remembering how he had ob- served me day after day watching the cardinal, he thought that he could not leave it in better hands than mine. And here was the bird in its big cage ! The cardinal was mine ! How could I believe it, even when I pulled the shawl off and saw the beautiful creature once more and heard the loud note! The gift of that bird from the stern ice-cold man who had looked at me as if he hated me, even as I had certainly hated him, now seemed the most wonderful thing which had ever happened in the world. It was a blissful time for me during that late winter season, when I lived for the bird ; then, as the days grew longer and brighter with the return of the sun, I was happier every day to see my cardinal's increasing delight in his new surroundings. It was certainly a great and marvellous change for him. The cardinals are taken as fledgelings from the nests in forests on the upper waters of the Plata river, and reared by hand by the natives, then sent down to the bird-dealers in Buenos Ayres; so that my bird had practically known only a i8 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS town life, and was now in a world of greenest grass and foliage, wide blue skies, and brightest sunshine for the first time. By day his cage was hung under the grape- vines outside the veranda ; there the warm fragrant wind blew on him and the sun shone down through the translucent red and green young vine-leaves. He was mad with excess of joy, hopping wildly about in his cage, calling loudly in response to the wild birds in the trees, and from time to time bursting out in song: not the three or four to half a dozen notes the cardinal usually emits, but a continuous torrent, like the soaring lark's, so that those who heard it marvelled and exclaimed that they had never known a cardinal with such a song. I can say for myself that I have, since then, listened to the singing of hundreds of cardinals, both wild and caged, and never heard one with a song so passionate and sustained. So it went on from day to day, until the vine-leaves, grown large, spread a green roof to keep the hot sun from him — a light roof of leaves which, stirred by the wind, still let the sparkling sunbeams fall through to enliven him, while outside the sheltering vines the bright world was all before him. If any person, even the wisest, had then told me that my cardinal was not the happiest bird in the world — that not being free to fly he could not be as happy as others — I should not have believed it; con- sequently it came as a shock to me when one day I discovered the cage empty — that my cardinal had made his escape! The cage, as I have said, was large, and the wires were so far apart that a bird the size of a linnet CARDINAL: MV FIRST CAGED BIRD 19 or siskin could not liavc been confined in it; but for the larger cardinal it was a safe prison. Unfortunately one of the wires had become loose — perhaps the bird had loosened it — and by working at it he had succeeded in bending it and finally bad managed to squeeze through and make his escape. Running out into the plantation I was soon apprised of his whereabouts by his loud call- note; but though he could not fly, but only hop and flutter from branch to branch — his wings never having been exercised — he refused to be caught. I was ad- vised to wait until he was hungry, then to try him with the cage. This I did, and, taking the cage, placed it on the ground under the trees and retired a few paces, holding it open by means of a string which when re- leased would cause the door to fly to. He became greatly excited on seeing the cage, and being very hungry soon came down to the ground and, to my joy, hopped up to it. But he did not go in: it seemed to me that he was considering the matter, if the state he was in of being pulled in opposite directions by two equally im- portune impulses may be so described. "Must I go in and satisfy my hunger — and live in prison ; or stay out and keep my freedom and go hungry?" He stood at the door of the cage, looking in at the seed, then turned and looked at me and at the trees, then looked at the seed again, and raised and lowered his shining crest and flirted his wings and tail, and was excited and in two minds and a quandary ; finally, after taking one more look at the tempting seed, he deliberately flew or fluttered up to the nearest branch, then to another, and 20 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS so on till he had gone to the very top of the tree, as if to get as far from the tempting cage as he could ! It was a great disappointment, and I now determined to hunt him down; for it was late in the day, and he was not a cunning wild bird to save himself from rats and owls and black and yellow opossums and other subtle enemies who would come presently on the scene. I hunted him from the first tree on to the next, then to another, until I had driven him out of the plantation to an open place where he fluttered over the surface until he came to the bank of the huge ditch or foss, about twelve feet deep and half as wide as the Regent's Park canal. He would drop into it, I thought, and I would then be able to capture him; but after a moment's rest on the bank he rose and succeeded in flying across, pitching on the other side. "Now I have him !" I ex- claimed, and, getting over the foss, I was quickly in hot pursuit after him; for outside the foss the earth spread out level and treeless, with nothing but grass and giant thistles growing on it. But his wings were now getting stronger with exercise, and he led me on and on for about a mile, then disappeared in a clump of giant thistles, growing on a warren or village of the vizcachas — the vizcacha being a big rodent that lives in com- munities in a dozen or twenty huge burrows, their mouths placed close together. He had escaped down one of these holes, and I waited in vain for him to come out, and in the end was compelled to go home without him. I don't know if I slept that night, but I was up and out an hour before sunrise, and, taking the cage, set CARDINAL: MY FIRST CAGED BIRD 21 out to look for him, with hltlc lu>po of finding him, fur there were foxes in tliat place — a family of cubs which I had seen — and, worse still, the large blood-thirsty black weasels of that country. But no sooner was I at the spot where I had lost him tlian I was greeted with his loud note. And there he was, hopping out from among the thistles, a most forlorn-looking object, his plumage wet anil draggled, and his feet thickly covered with wet clay! And he was glad to see mc! As soon as I put the cage down he came straight to it and, without a moment's hesitation, hopped in and began feasting on the seed. It was a happy ending. My bird had had a lesson which he would not forget ; there would be no more tugging at the wires, nor would he ever wish to be free again. So I imagined. But I was wrong. From that time the bird's disposition was changed: ever in a rest- less anxious state, he would flit from side to side of his cage, chirping loudly, but never singing — never one note; the gladness that had made him sing so wonderfully had quite gone out of him. And invariably, after hopping about for a few moments, he would go back to the wire which had been loosened and bent — the one weak spot which was now repaired — and tug at and shake it again. And at last, greatly to my surprise, he actually succeeded in bending the same wire once more and mak- ing his escape ! Once more I went to look for him with the cage in my hand, but when I found him he refused to be tempted. I left him for a day to starve, then tried him again; 22 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS and then again many and many times on many following days, for he was now much too strong on the wing to be hunted down; but though he invariably greeted and appeared to welcome me with his loud chirp, he refused to come down, and after excitedly hailing me and flirting his feathers for a few moments he would fly away. Gradually I grew reconciled to my loss, for, though no longer my captive — my own bird — he was near me, living in the plantation and frequently seen. Often and often, at intervals of a few or of many days, when my lost, yet not wholly lost, cardinal was not in my mind, I would come upon him, sometimes out on the plain, feeding with a flock of purple cow-birds, or yellow- breasted troupials, or some other species ; and when they would all rise up and fly away at my approach, he alone, after going a little distance with them, would drop out of the crowd and pitch on a stalk or thistle-bush, just, as it would appear, to look at me and hail me with his loud note — to say that he remembered me still; then off he would fly after the others. That little action of his went far to reconcile me to his loss — to endear him still more to me, changing my boyish bitterness to a new and strange kind of delight in his happiness. But the end of the story is not yet: even at this dis- tance, after so many changing and hardening years, I experience a certain reluctance or heaviness of heart in telling it. The warm bright months went by and it was winter again — the cold season from May to August, when the CARDINAL: MY FIRST CAGED RIRD 23 trees arc bare, tlic rainy soulli wind blows, and there are frosty nights, frosts that would sometimes last all day or even several days. Then it was that I missed my bird and wondered often what had become of him. Had he too flown north to a warmer country with the swallows and other niij^rants? It could not be believed. But he was no longer in the plantation — that little sheltering island of trees in the level grassy sea-like plain; and I should never see him more or know what his fate had been. One day, in August, the men employed about the place were engaged in a grand annual campaign against the rats — a sort of spring-cleaning in and out of doors. The shelter of the huge old foss, and of the trees and thickets, wood-piles, many outbuildings and barns full of raw or untanned hides, attracted numbers of these unpleasant little beasts and made it a sort of rats' metropolis; and it was usual to clear them out in early spring before the new grass and herbage sprang up and covered the ground. They were suffocated with smoke, made deadly with brimstone and tobacco, pumped into their holes. I was standing by one of the men who was opening one of the runs after the smoking process, when I caught sight of a gleam of scarlet colour in a heap of straw and rubbish he was turning over with his spade, and, jumping down, I picked up the shining red object. It was my lost cardinal's crest! And there too were his grey wing and tail feathers, white feathers from his breast, and even some of his bones. Alas! he had found it too cold to roost in the naked trees in the 24 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS cold wind and rain, and, seeking a more sheltered roost- ing place on the ground, had been caught and carried into its den and devoured by a rat. I experienced a second and greater grief at his miser- able end — a feeling so poignant that the memory has endured till now. For he was my loved cardinal — my first caged bird. And he was also my last. I could have no other, the lesson he had taught me having sunk into my heart — the knowledge that to a bird too the world is very beautiful and liberty very sweet. I could even rejoice, when time had softened my first keen sorrow, that my cardinal had succeeded in making his escape, since at the last he had experienced those miraculous months of joyous existence, living the true bird-life for which nature had fashioned and fitted him. In all the years of his captivity he could never have known such a happiness, nor can any caged bird know it, however loudly and sweetly he may sing to win a lump of sugar or a sprig of groundsel from his tender- hearted keeper and delude him with the idea that it is well with his prisoner — that no injustice has been done. The White-Fronted Wild Goose CHAPTER III Wells-next-the-Sea, where Wild Geese Congregate There are few places in England where you can get so much wildness and desolation of sea and sand-hills, wood, green marsh, and grey saltings as at Wells, in Norfolk, the small old red-brick town, a mile and a quarter from the beach, with a green embankment lying across the intervening marsh connecting town and sea. Here you can have it all in the space of a half-day's prowl or saunter — I cannot say "walk," seeing that I am as often standing or sitting still as in motion. The little village-like town in its quietude and sense of re- moteness from the world is itself a restful place to be in; going out you have on the land side the quiet green as 26 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS Norfolk country of winding roads and lanes, old farm- houses and small red villages which appear almost de- serted. As I passed through one the other day, the thought was in my mind that in this village not one inhabitant remained, when all at once I caught sight of a very old man, shrunk and lean and grey, standing in a cottage garden behind its grey palings. His clothes, too, like his hair and face, were a dull grey, so like the hue of the old weathered and lichen-stained wood of the palings as to make him almost invisible. It was an instance of protective resemblance in the human species. He was standing motionless, leaning on his stick, peering at me out of his pale dim eyes as if astonished at the sight of a stranger in that lonely place. But I love the solitariness on the side towards the sea best, the green marsh extending to Holkham on your left hand, once a salt flat inundated by the sea but long reclaimed by the making of that same green bank I have mentioned — the causeway which connects Wells with the beach. On the right side of this bank is the estuary by which small ships may creep up to the town at high tide, and the immense grey saltings extending miles and miles away to Blakeney. Between the flats and the sea are the sand-hills, rough with grey marram grass; then the beach, and, if the tide is up, the sea; but when the water is out, you look across miles of smooth and ribbed sands, with no life visible on its desolate expanse except a troop of gulls resting in a long white line, and very far out a few men and boys WHERE WILD GEESE CONGREGATE 27 digging for bait in tlic sand, looking no bigger tban crows at that distance. Beyond the line of white gulls and the widely scattered and diminished human fomis is the silvery-grey line of the sea, with perhaps a sail or two faintly visible on the horizon. What more could any one desire? — what could add to the fascinations of such a retreat? A wood! Well, we have that too, a dark pine wood growing on the slopes of the sand-hills on the land side and extending from tlie Wells embankment to Holkham a couple of miles away. Many an hour in the late afternoons and evenings have I spent in that perfect solitude listening to the sea-wind in the pines when the sound of wind and sea were one, and finding the deep shelter warm and grateful after a long ramble over the sands and dunes and marshes. For I go not to Wells in "the season," when days are long and the sun is hot, the scattering time for all those who live "too thick," when even into this remote spot drift a few of the pale town-people with books in their pockets and cameras and green butterfly-nets in their hands. The wild geese are not there then, they are away breeding in the Siberian tundra or Spitz- bergen; and for that wild exhilarating clangour which they make when passing overhead to and from the sea, and for the cra-cra of the hooded crow — his harsh war- cry and curse on everything — you hear lark and titlark, dunnock and wren, with the other members of the "feathered choir" even as in all other green places. Autumn and winter is my time, and at no other place 28 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS in the kingdom can the grey geese be seen to better advantage, despite the fact that to this spot the wild- fowler comes annually in numbers, and that many of the natives, even the poorest, possess a gun and are always on the look-out for geese. The birds come in undiminished numbers, probably because they find here the one green spot on which they can repose in compara- tive safety. This spot is the reclaimed marsh or meadowland which I have mentioned as lying between the Wells embankment and Holkham. It is not a per- fect sanctuary, since the geese are shot a few times during the winter by the lord of the manor and his guests; but the dangerous days are so few and far be- tween at this place that the geese have come to regard it as a safe refuge, and are accustomed to congregate daily in large numbers, two or three thousand or more being often seen together. How intelligent these noble birds are! The whole human population of the country round are against them, waiting for them morning and evening in various hiding-places to shoot them down as they pass over- head to and from the sea. This incessant persecution had made them the wariest of all wild birds and most difficult to approach. Yet here, where their enemies are most numerous, where they keep the sharpest watch when feeding and roosting, and when on the wing fly high to keep out of range of those who lie in wait for them — on this one green spot they drop down to rest and feed by the hour and pay but the slightest at- tention to the human form and the sights and sounds WHERE WILD GEESE CONGREGATE 29 of liuman life! This camping-ground is backed by the sand-liills and pine wood ; on the opposite side is the coast road and sight of people driving and walking, and nearer still the line of the railway from Lynn to Wells, The marsh, too, is fed by cattle and horses and sheep; there is the shepherd with his dog, and others from the farms going about ; but the geese do not heed them, nor do they show alarm when a train rushes past a couple of hundred yards away puffing out steam and making a mighty noise on that flat moist earth. They have made the discovery that there is no harm in it notwith- standing its huge size, its noise and swift motion. To find at this spot that I was able to look at a flock of a thousand or two of geese at a short distance has been one of my most delightful experiences in bird- watching in England. I had heard of their tameness from others, but could hardly credit it until witnessing it myself. The best time was in fine weather as we occasionally get it in October and November, when the wind is still and the sunshine bright and warm, for the birds are then in a drowsy state and less vigilant than at other times, especially after a moonlight night when they have been feeding on the stubble and pastures. You can then get quite near to them and see them at their best, and with a good binocular bring them as close to your eyes as you like. It is a very fine sight — this assemblage of large wild birds on the green turf sitting or standing in every attitude of repose. At a distance they look almost black ; seen closely one admires the shading of their plumage, the dark upper barred 30 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS greys and browns, and the buff colouring on neck and breast and pink beak and legs. The sight is peculiarly fine when as frequently happens, great numbers of birds of other species gather at the same spot as if a parlia- ment of the feathered nations were being held. Rooks and crows, both black and hooded, and daws are often there in hundreds ; lapwings too in hundreds, and black- headed gulls and starlings and wintering larks, with other small birds. The geese repose, the others are mostly moving about in search of worms and grubs. The lapwings are quietest, inclined to repose too; but at intervals they all rise up and wheel about for a minute or so, then drop to earth again. As I stand motionless leaning on a gate watching them, having them, as seen through the glasses, no more than twenty yards away, I note that for all their quietude in the warm sleepy sunshine they are wild geese still, that there are always two or three to half a dozen who keep their heads up and their eyes wide open for the general good, also that the entire company is subject at intervals to little contagious gusts and thrills of alarm. It may be some loud unusual noise — a horse on the road suddenly breaking into a thunderous gallop, or the "hoot-hoot" of a motor-car; then the enraged scream of a gull or carrion-crow at strife with his neigh- bour; the sleepers wake and put up their heads, but in a few moments they are reposing again. Then a great heron that has been standing motionless like a grey column for an hour starts up and passes swaying and flapping over them, creating a fresh alarm, which sub- WHERE WILD GEESE CONGREGATE 31 sides as quickly as the first. By-aml-by a fresh flock of geese arrive, returning from some inland feeding-ground, where tlie gunners have been after them, flying high with a great clamour whicii you hear before they become visible. Arrived at the refuge, they wheel round and begin their descent, but do not alight; again they rise to circle about and again descend, and when close to the earth, every bird dropping his bright-coloured legs to touch the ground, suddenly they change their minds and rise to wheel about for a minute or two and then go right away out to sea. It was no doubt my presence on several occasions which prevented them from settling down with the others; for it was no harmless shepherd or farm- labourer which they perceived looked on standing mo- tionless by the gate watching their fellows, a suspicious- looking object in his hand. It might be a gamekeeper or sportsman whose intention was to send a charge of shot into the crowd. But this going away of the flock instead of alighting would prove too much for the others: they would now be all awake; the suspicion would grow and grow, every bird standing up with out- stretched neck; then they would draw closer together, emitting excited cackling sounds, all asking what it was — what had frightened their fellows and sent them away — what danger invisible to them had they spied from aloft ? And then they would spring simultaneously into the air with a rushing noise of wings and tempest of screams, and rising high go straight away over the sea, soon vanishing from sight, only to return half an hour 32 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS later and settle down once more in the same green place. To the naturalist, to any bird-lover in fact, a large gathering of big birds is, of all sights, the most ex- hilarating, especially in this country where the big birds have been diligently weeded out until few are left. At Wells I had two matters in my mind to enhance the pleasure experienced. One was in the thought of the birds' striking intelligence, as shown by their changed demeanour during their daily visits to that camping- spot on the marsh where they relax their extreme wild- ness. It is often borne in on me in observing birds that the position of a species or family in the scale of nature from the point of view of the anatomist and evolu- tionist is not a criterion of its Intelligence. Thus the Anatidae, or ducks, which in any natural classification would be placed far below the crows and parrots, are mentally equal to the highest of the bird order. It was purely the Intelligence of these geese which made it possible for me to observe them so nearly at that spot, which was no sand-bar with the protecting sea all around it, but a small space in the very midst of the enemies' country. It gave me even a higher pleasure to think that there are still a few great landowners in England, like the present and the late Lord Leicester, who do not look on our noble bird life as something to be destroyed for sport, or In the interests of sport, until it has been wiped out of existence. It is not only the geese which receive protection here. Ducks in thousands are accus- WHERE WILD GEESE CONGREGATE 33 tomcd to winter in the park at ITolkham. All breeding species, from the hc-autiful sheldrake to the small red- shank and ringed dotterel, are protected as much as they can be in a place where every one has a gun and wants to get something for the pot In summer the common and lesser tern have their breeding place on the sand-hills, and a watcher is placed there to prevent them from being distributed and harried by trippers and egg- stealing collectors. One curious result of the protection given to the terns was that two or three years ago two pairs of black-headed gulls started breeding close to them. It was as if these gulls had observed what was being done and had said to one another: "This is not a suitable breeding-place for gulls, though a proper one for terns who prefer sand and shingle; but what an advantage to have a man stationed there to protect the nests from being harried ! Come, let us make our nests here, just on the border of the terns' gullery, on the chance of our eggs coming in for protection too." The experiment turned out well, and last summer no fewer than sixteen pairs nested and brought off their young at that spot. The Bullfinch CHAPTER IV Great Bird Gatherings This chapter is nothing but a digression, suggested by what goes before; for the subject touched on in the account of the wild geese on the East Coast is one which stirs the naturaHst and bird-lover deeply — the delight of witnessing immense congregations of birds, especially those of large size and noble appearance. The remem- brance of such scenes is a joy for ever, in many instances clouded by the thought that the sight which it is a happi- ness to recall will be witnessed no more. Some years ago the distinguished naturalist and palaeontologist, Mr. Richard Lydekker, went out to Buenos Ayres to look over and arrange the collection of tertiary fossils in the famous La Plata Museum. He had read my Naturalist in La Plata with industrious zeal, quoting from it in rather a wholesale way when 34 GREAT lURD GATHERINGS 35 compiling his Royal Natural History. He liad also read Darwin and other naturahsts who have described that same region, and had a liundred tilings to look at besides the fossils. One thing he desired to see was the crested screamer — that great spur-winged loud- voiced bird which has puzzled zoologists to classify, some thinking it ralline, others anserine, in its affinities, while Huxley considered it w\as related to the archae- opteryx. Having established himself on the back of a horse, Mr. Lydckker — a biological Dr. Syntax of the twentieth century — set out in quest of this singular fowl, and eventually in some wild and lonely spot succeeded in catching sight at a vast distance of a specimen or two. This did not satisfy him ; he wanted to see the great birds as I had seen them, when I rode among them across a vast marshy plain and saw them in pairs and parties, and in bunches of a score or two to a hun- dred, like an innumerable widely scattered flock of graz- ing sheep spread out and extending on every side to the horizon. And he wanted to hear them as I had heard them, "counting the hours," as the gauchos say, when at intervals during the night they all burst out singing like one bird, and the powerful ringing voices of the incalculable multitude produce an effect as of thousands and tens of thousands of great chiming bells, and the listener is shaken by the tempest of sound and the earth itself appears to tremble beneath him. All this, our naturalist was informed by persons on the spot, was pure romance; no such vast congregations of crested screamers were ever seen, and no such great 36 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS concerts were ever heard; the bird, as he had witnessed, was quite rare, and so it had always been. This vexed him, and he resolved to have it out with me on his return to England. The castigation was to'' be made in public and the Naturalist in La Plata to be for ever discredited. Luckily for my poor little repu- tation he had made further enquiries before quitting the country and discovered that I had told the simple truth, that the screamer, albeit a very big bird, had been excessively abundant and in dry seasons often formed the stupendous gatherings I had described; finally, that in about a quarter of a century it had been practically extirpated on the pampas. All this I had from his own lips on his return, an almost incredible example of can- dour, for it is well known that we naturalists, like the early Christians, love one another. Alas! the crested screamer is but one of many noble species which have met with the same fate in southern Argentina. The rhea, the great blue heron, the flamingo, the wood ibis, and the great blue ibis of the marshes and the great black-faced ibis of the uplands with its resounding cries as of giants beating with hammers on iron plates; and storks and upland geese, and the white and the black-necked swans. Then fol- low others of lesser size — the snowy egrets and other herons and bitterns, glossy ibis, rails and courlans, big and little, the beautiful golden-winged jagana, curlews and godwits, and waders and ducks too numerous to mention. They were in myriads on the rivers and marshes, they were seen in clouds in the air, like star- GREAT IMRD GATHERINGS 37 lings in England when liicy congregate at their roost- ing-placcs. They arc gone now, or are rapidly going. Their destruction was proceeding when I left, hating Ihe land of my birth and the Italian immigration that was blighting it, wishing only that I could escape from all recollection of the scenes I had witnessed — of the very land where I first knew and loved birds. How amazing it seems that the chief destroyers should be the South Europeans, the Latins, who are supposed to be lovers of the beautiful and who are undoubtedly the most religious of all people! They have no symbol for the heavenly beings they worship but a bird. Their religious canvases, illuminations, and temples, inside and out, are covered with representa- tions of ibises, cranes, pigeons, gulls, modified so as to resemble human figures, and these stand for angels and saints and the third person of the Trinity. Yet all these people, from popes, cardinals, princes, and nobles down to the meanest peasant on the land, are eager to slay and devour every winged creature, from noble crane and bustard even to the swallow that builds in God's house and the minute cutty wren and fairy-like firecrest — the originals of those sacred emblematic figures before which they bow in adoration ! But it is not the Latins only that are concerned in this dreadful business; our race too — a nobler race as w^e try to think — at home, in North America, Africa, and Australasia, have been only too diligently occupied in exterminating. Let it not be forgotten that down to 1868, the date of our first wild Bird Protection Act, 38 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS the chief breeding-places of our sea birds were invaded every year at hoHday time by train-loads and ship-loads of trippers with guns to engage in the wholesale mas- sacre of the birds on the cliffs and the sea. Nor was it confined to the trippers from London, Manchester, Birmingham, and other great centres of population; the fascination of it drew men of all classes, including those who annually shot (and even owned) the moors and coverts. For in June and July the grouse and partridge and pheasant were not yet ready for killing, and it was great fun in the meantime to have a few days with the gannets, terns, kittiwakes, guillemots, and other auks. It was nothing to them that the birds were breeding, that the result of this wholesale slaughter would be the extirpation of the multitudes of sea birds which people the cliffs before the century was out, since they were no man's birds — only God's. Happily there were a few men in England who had the courage to lift up their voices against this hideous iniquity, who eventually succeeded in getting an Act for its suppression. Thus it came about that our sea birds were saved and we have them still, and that we were given courage to go on and try to save our land birds as well. And with this business we are still occupied, fighting to save our country's bird life from destruction — how strange that so long and strenuous a fight should be necessary to secure such an object! But that it is a winning fight becomes more evident as the years go on. There is now a public feeling on our side: we are GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 39 not a brutisii nation ready to stamp out all beauty from the earth so long as the killing and stamping out processes minister to our pleasure or profit. On the contrary we can afiirm that a majority of the inhabi- tants of tiiis country are desirous of preserving its beau- tiful wild bird life. Those who are on the other side may be classified as the barbarians of means who are devoted mainly to sport, and would cheerfully see the destruction of most of our birds above the size of a thrush for the sake of that disastrous exotic, the semi- domestic pheasant of the preserves; secondly, the private collector, that "curse of rural England"; and last but not least, the regiment of horrible women who persist in decorating their heads with aigrettes and carcases of slaughtered birds. In the forty odd years that have passed since a first attempt was made to give some pro- tection t® our wild birds much has been done in Eng- land ; and happily in other lands and continents occupied by men of British race our example is being followed. Would that the Americans had begun to follow it three decades sooner, since owing to their tardiness they have many and great losses to lament. It is not strange that the crested screamer, with many other noble species, has quickly been done to death in a country overrun by Italians, when it is remembered that in the United States of America the passenger pigeon, the most abundant species in all that continent, has been extirpated in very recent times without an effort having been made to save it. Now that it is gone the accounts given by Audubon and Fenimore Cooper of its numbers when its migrating 40 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS flocks darkened the sun at noon read like the veriest fables — inventions as wild as those of the crested screamer congregations in my La Plata book, and of the migration of fishes in the Pacific described by Herman Melville. To return to the subject which was uppermost in my mind when I sat down to write this chapter, or this digression. It was the peculiar delight produced in us by the sight and sound of birds, especially those of large size, in flocks and multitudes. The bird itself is a thing of beauty, supreme in this respect among living forms, therefore, as we have seen, the symbol in art of all that is highest in the spiritual world. Nevertheless we find that the pleasure of seeing a single bird is as nothing compared to that of seeing a numerous company of birds. Take this case of the wild grey goose — a large, handsome bird, a joy to look at whether flying or stand- ing motionless and statuesque with head raised, on the wide level flats and marshes. But the pleasure is infi- nitely greater when I see a flock of a thousand or of two or three thousands as I do here where I am writing this on the East Coast. They come over me, seen first very far off as a black line, wavering, breaking, and re-forming, increasing like a coming cloud and changing its form, till it resolves itself into the host of great broad-winged birds, now black against the pale immense sky, now flashing white in the sun. I hear them too, even before they become visible, a distant faint clan- gour which grows and changes as it comes and is a beautiful noise of many shrill and deep sounds, as of GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 41 wind and stringed instruments, producing an orchestral cfTcct, as of an orchestra in tlic clouds. What is the secret <>f the dclij^ht which possesses mc at such a spectacle, which seems at the moment to sur- pass all other delights, giving me a joy that will last for days? It is not merely that the pleasure in the single bird is intensified, or doubled or increased a hun- dred-fold. It is not the same old feeling in a greater degree; there is a new element in it which makes it dif- ferent in character. The sight dwells wdth pleasure on a pleasant landscape; but if we then ascend a hill and look upon the scene from that higher standpoint a quite different feeling is experienced ; the wider horizon is a revelation of vastness, of a greatness which is practically new, since the mind had previously become attuned to earth as viewed from the lower level. Now we get the element of sublimity. So, in the case of the large bird seen in flocks and vast numbers — seen and heard; it is a sudden revelation of wild life in its nobler aspect — of its glorious freedom and power and majesty. We get this emotion in various degrees at the various breeding stations of our larger birds, notably on the Yorkshire and Northumberland coasts, the Bass Rock, the Orkneys and Shetlands, and "utmost Kilda's lonely isle." Those who have experienced it value it above all the delights this spectacular world can afford them, and their keenest desire is for its repetition. It is to taste this feeling that thousands of persons, some with the pretext of bird-study or photography, annuallv visit these teeming stations within the kingdom, whilst 42 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS others who are able to go further afield seek out the great bird haunts in other countries. But the feeling is incommunicable, and is a treasured memory and secret, a joy for ever in the heart. Those who do not know it — who have had no opportunity of finding out for themselves — cannot imagine it. To these it may seem strange that any man should turn his back on the comforts of civilised life to spend long laborious days in dreary desert regions, scorched by tropical suns, devoured by mosquitoes, wading in pestilential swamps; not for sport, the fascination of which is universally known, but just for the sake of seeing a populous rook- ery or congregation of big birds in their breeding haunts. Those who do know will bear these discomforts, and even greater ones, for the sake of that glorious gladness which the sight will produce in them. This rather than the notes and bundle of photographs which they bring back is what they have gone out to seek. The Swallow CHAPTER V Birds in Authority I WAS on my way to the West of England, and from Waterloo for about a hundred and twenty miles had but one fellow-traveller in the carriage. A man of a fine presence, about sixty; from his keen, alert eyes, hard weathered face, and his dress I took him to be a sportsman. He very soon let me know that he was one, as great an enthusiast as one could meet; and as he was companionable and we talked the whole time, I got to know a good deal about him. Shooting and fish- ing were his chief pleasures and interest in life: he had followed both from his early years. In and out of Eng- land. For the last ten or twelve years he had lived at the antipodes, where he held an important position in one of the colonies ; but somehow the sports he loved 43 44 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS best had not the same reHsh for him in that distant country as at home, and he was accustomed to take frequent and long hoHdays to have a month on the moors and in the coverts and to go on shooting and fishing excursions to the continent. Wild-fowling was perhaps the kind of sport he loved best of all, and we soon got on the subject of wild geese. That bird was much in my mind at the moment, for I was just back from the east coast, where I had been staying with the wild geese, so to speak, at Wells-next- the-Sea, watching them every day in their great gather- ings and listening to their multitudinous resounding cries, which affect one like bells, "jangled, out of tune and harsh" it may be, but the sense of wildness and freedom the sound imparts is exceedingly grateful. Some of his adventures among the geese caused me to remark that, even if I had not long ceased to be a sportsman, I would never again lift a gun against a wild goose; it was so intelligent a bird that it would be like shooting at a human being. He had no such feeling — could not understand it. If geese were more intelligent than other species, that only made them the better sporting birds, and the pleasure of circumventing them was so much the greater. There was nothing bet- ter to get the taste of shooting half-tame hand-fed driven birds out of the mouth than a week or two after wild geese. He had just had a fine time with them on the coast of Norway. This reminded him of something. Yes, the wild goose was about as intelligent a bird as you could find. The friend he had been staying with BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 45 was the owner of a small group of islands or islets on the coast of Norway; he had bought them a good many years ago purely for sporting purposes, as the geese invariably came there on migration and spent some time on the islands. There was one island where the geese used to congregate every year on arrival in large num- bers, and here one autumn some years ago a goose was caught by the leg in a steel trap set for a fox. The keeper from a distance saw the whole vast gathering of geese rise up and circle round and round in a cloud, making a tremendous outcry, and going to the spot he found tlie bird struggling violently in the trap. He took it home to another and larger island close by where his master, my informant's friend, had a farm. From that day the wild geese never settled on that islet, which had been used as a resting-place for very many years. The bird he had accidentally caught was an old gander, and had its leg smashed ; but the keeper set to work to repair the injury, and after binding it up he put the bird in an outhouse and eventually it got quite well. He then pinioned it and put it out with the other birds. A little while before the old gander had been caught the foxes had become so troublesome at the farm that it was found necessary to secure all the birds every night in enclosures and houses made for the purpose, and as the birds preferred to be out the keeper had to go round and spend a good deal of time every evening in collecting and driving them in. Now before the old wild goose had been able to go about many days with the others it was noticed that he was acquiring a kind 46 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS of mastery over them, and every day as evening ap- proached he began to try to lead and, failing in that, to drive them to the enclosures and buildings. The keeper, curious to see how far this would go, began to relax his efforts and to go round later and later each evening, and as his efforts slackened the gander's zeal increased, until he was left to do the whole work him- self and all the keeper had to do was to go round and shut the doors. This state of things had now con- tinued for some years, and the old wild goose was the acknowledged leader and master of all the birds on the farm. The story of this wise gander, its readiness in adapt- ing itself to a wholly new way of life and in taking in the situation — the danger by night and need of some- one in authority over that heterogeneous crowd of birds who had lost the power of flight, and, from being looked after, had grown careless of their own safety — and, finally, the taking of it all on himself, putting himself in office as it were, may strike us as very strange, but it agrees well enough with the character of the bird as we know it in its domestic condition. It is common to hear of the masterful old gander at farm-houses, the ruler and sometimes tyrant of the farmyard. I have myself observed and have heard of many instances of long-lasting and exceedingly bitter feuds between an imperious gander and some other member of the feathered community, a turkey cock or Muscovy duck or peacock who refused to be governed by a goose. But I was specially pleased to have had this story of the BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 47 bird in Norway from a sportsman and enthusiastic wild- fowler, one of the class who do not like to think too much about the psychology of the creatures it is their pleasure to follow and destroy. I have also heard of cases of birds of other species taking on themselves the leadership and guardianship of their fellows. One from South America relates to the trumpeter, the strange and delightful Psophia Icn- coptcra, a quaint, beautiful creature, a little ostrich in shape, taller than a fowl, very dark, with white wings, the head and neck glossed with purple and green. A singular bird, too, in its voice and manner, when three or four get together and have a sort of drum and trumpet performance, keeping time to the music with measured steps and bowings and various quaint gestures and motions. Alas ! they are delicate birds, and all the beau- tiful trumpeters we had some time ago in the Zoological Gardens are now dead — to come to life again, let us hope, in their distant home in some Brazilian forest. About twenty years ago an American naturalist, one Dr. Rusby, was in a part of Bolivia where it was com- mon to keep a pet trumpeter, and he says that the Spanish settlers almost worshipped them on account of their amiable and affectionate domestic habits. Early in the morning the trumpeter would go into a sleeper's room and salute him on rising by dancing about the floor, bowing its head and dropping its w-ings and tail, con- tinuing the performance until its presence was noticed and it was spoken to, whereupon it would depart to visit another bedroom, to repeat the ceremony there, then to 48 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS another, until the whole household had been visited and bid "Good-morning." Afterwards, when all were up, it would attach itself to some one member of the family and follow him or her about most of the day. The trumpeter loved and took an interest in every one of the house, including the stranger within the gates, but was specially devoted to one or two individuals. It is right to remember that this beautiful disposition of the trumpeter and all its pretty actions have not been acquired through companionship with human beings: they are mere survivals of its own wild life in the forest with its own fellows, and possibly with birds of other species with which it associates. At all events, I have heard of cases in which a tame trumpeter, in a country house in Brazil or Venezuela, where fowls and birds of various kinds were kept and allowed to roam about at will, placed himself in charge of the others, attending them at their feeding grounds, keeping watch, giving the alarm at the approach of danger, and bringing or hunting them home at roosting-time. If my reader happens not to be of those who regard a bird merely as a creature to be taken and destroyed for man's pleasure or for the decoration of his women, who like a lovely hat to match the lovely spirit within, I trust that he will not think that these be tall stories about a wise grey goose in grey north lands and a benevolent trumpeter in the tropics, for then he will perhaps say that the story I have got to tell in conclu- sion is taller still. It is a common fact in natural history that the males BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 49 of certain species cxliibit a pood deal of anxiety about the proper care of the eggs, and exercise supervision and authority over the females, compelling them during the period of incubation to return to the nest when they are inclined to stay out too long. Our swift is a familiar example. But has any one ever observed an individual of any species, one of a colony, presumably a male, exercising this kind of mastership over a number of females in the absence of their mates? Yet this is exactly what I witnessed on one occasion, and if I were to ask a dozen or fifty naturalists to name the species they would all guess wrong, for the bird in question was the small, delicate, gentle, moth-like sand-martin — the "mountain butterfly," as it is prettily named in Spain. Near Yeovil I found a breeding-place of these birds in a vast old sand-pit. It was in IMay, and no doubt they were incubating. There were about fifty holes in the steepest side of the sand-bank, and when I began watching them there were about fourteen or fifteen birds flying round and round within the basin of the pit, hawking after flies, and perhaps prolonging their play- time after their morning feed. By-and-by I noticed one bird acting in a singular manner; I saw him come out of one hole and go quickly into another, then another still, until he had visited several, remaining about five or six seconds in each, or as long as it would take him to run to the end of the burrow and return. Finally, having finished inspecting the holes, he began pursuing one of the birds flying aimlessly about in the pit; the chase increased in speed and violence until the hunted 50 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS bird took refuge in one of the burrows. He then started chasing another of the birds flying about, and in due time this one was also driven into one of the holes. Then a third chase began, then a fourth and so on until every bird had been driven into a hole, always after a good deal of rushing about, and he remained alone. After flying up and down a few times he finally flew ofT, probably to some water-course or moist meadow abounding in flies at a distance from the pit, where he would join the other males of the colony. I remained for some time on the spot, keeping a close watch on the little black burrows on the orange-coloured sand-bank, but not a bird flew or even peeped out; nor did any of the absent birds return to the pit. Is it a habit of this swallow in the breeding-time for one male to remain behind when the others go away to feed, and the females, or some of them, are still off their eggs, just as, in other species, when the company settles down to feed or sleep one k-eeps awake and on guard? The action of the swallow in putting back the others on their eggs strikes one as a development of some such habit or instinct as that of the swift, and it is possible that in the sand-martin the social habit is in a more advanced state and the communities more close- knit than in most species. But there is a good deal to learn yet about the inner life of birds. Observers of animals are familiar with the fact of a bird of masterful temper making himself head and tyrant of his fellows, albeit it is less common or less noticeable among birds that have the social habit than BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 51 it is among mammals. It appears to mc that the in- stances given above are not of this kind. The spirit, the motive, is different. Here tiie Ijird is seen to take tlie mastersliip for the general good, and we can only suppose that, with or without greater strength and in- telligence than his fellows, he undoubtedly possesses a keener sense of danger, or superior alertness, and a larger measure of that helpful spirit without which wild animals could not exist in a social state. The action of the gander and of the trumpeter in driving their fellows home in the evening must be regarded as similar in its origin to that of the male swift when he hunts his mate back to the nest and of the sand-martin I observed chasing the females of the colony to their bur- rows. In a lesser way it may be seen in any flock of birds; they move about in such an orderly manner, springing, as it appears to us, simultaneously into the air, going in a certain direction, settling here or there to feed, presently going away to another distant feed- ing-ground or alighting to rest or sing on trees and bushes, as to produce the idea of a single mind. But the flock is not a machine; the minds are many; one bird gives the signal — the one who is a little better in his keener senses and quicker intelligence than his com- panions; his slightest sound, his least movement, is heard and seen and understood and is instantly and simultaneously acted upon. So well and quickly is he understood and obeyed that the fact of his leadership or promptership is difficult to detect. Another mani- festation of this same helpful spirit with which observers 52 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS of wild animals are familiar, is seen in the self-appointed guardian or sentinel of the feeding or sleeping flock. In some mammals it appears in a striking way, as in the guanaco on the Patagonian plains, when one mem- ber of the herd ascends a hill or other high spot to keep watch while his fellows are browsing on the bushes or grazing on the plain below. In some birds the watchful spirit is so powerful that the sentinel and alarm-giver is not satisfied to see only those of his own species obey his warning; he would have every feathered creature within hearing escape from danger. The curlew is an example and has been observed by wild-fowlers swoop- ing violently upon and trying to drive up a duck that had remained on the ground after all the other birds in the place had taken flight. Much more could be said on the subject if there were not so many others to be dealt with in this book: probably every wild-fowler, and in fact every close ob- server of the actions of birds who reads this chapter will be able to recall some incident he has witnessed which illustrates this helpful spirit. But I cannot con- clude before giving one remarkable example of a bird or of birds making themselves masters of a flock not with any important purpose as in the foregoing instances, but purely in play, or for fun. I witnessed this inci- dent many years ago, and told it briefly in Argentine Ornithology, but that work is little known and unob- tainable, and I am rather pleased at the opportunity of relating it again more fully in this place. The bird was a Vanellus, a lapwing in its shape, crest, BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 53 and the cnlour of its pluma{2^c closely aliiccl to our familiar bird of the moors atui pasture-lands, but a third bigger, with pink beak, crimson eyes, scarlet spurs on its winj^'s, and brij^ht red lej^s, and these touches of colour, "angric and brave," give it a strikingly bold appearance. Our green plover is like a small weak copy of the Argentine bird. The voice of the latter, too, is twice as loud, and its temper more jealous and violent. In its habits it resembles the peewit, but has a greater love of play, which it practises, botli when flying and on the ground. This play on the ground, called by the natives the bird's "dance," is performed by a set of three, and is indulged in every day at intervals all the year round. So fond of it are they that when the birds are distributed in pairs all over the plains, for some time before and during the breeding season, one bird may frequently be seen to leave his mate at home and fly away to visit another pair in the neighbourhood. These, instead of rising up with angry screams to hunt him furiously away from their sacred ground as they would any other bird, receive his visit with manifest pleasure, and running to him where he stands motion- less, they place themselves behind him, standing abreast, their plumage puffed out, and then with loud, rhythmical, drumming notes uttered by the pair, and loud single measured notes by the leader, they begin a rapid march, stepping in time to the music; then, when the march is ended the leader as a rule lifts his wings and holds them erect, still emitting loud notes, while the two behind, still stand abreast with slightly opened wings 54 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS and puffed-out feathers, lower their heads until the tips of their beaks touch the ground, at the same time sinking their voices until the drumming sound dies to a whisper. The performance is then over, and is repeated, or if the visitor is in a hurry he takes his departure, to rejoin his mate and receive a visitor himself by-and-by. One dry summer, long after the breeding-season was over while out riding I passed by a lagoon, or lakelet, where the birds from all the plain for some miles round were accustomed to come to drink, and noticed a gather- ing of about a hundred lapwings standing quietly near the water. It was evident they had all had their drink and bath, and were drying and greening their feathers and resting before going back to their several feeding- grounds. On seeing them^my attention was instantly arrested by the singular behaviour of two birds, the only restless noisy ones in that quiet, silent company. It was not a close company; every bird had a good space to himself, his nearest neighbour standing a foot or more away, and right in among them the two restless birds were trotting freely about, uttering loud commanding notes, and apparently greatly excited about something. I had seen nothing like that before, and it puzzled me to account for their action. By-and-by there was a fresh arrival; a lapwing came to drink, and instead of dropping down on the edge of the water, he alighted about thirty feet away, at a distance of two or three yards from the others, and remained there, standing erect and motionless as if waiting. The two busy birds, still crying aloud, now made their way to him, and BIRDS IN AUTHORITY 55 placing themselves behind him and observing all the attitudes and gestures used in their "dances" or marches and giving the signal, the three set off at a trot to the sound of drums and the thirsty bird was run down to the water. He at once went into the depth of his knees and drank, then squatting down, bathed his feathers, the whole process lasting about half a minute. He would, no doubt, have taken much longer over his refreshment but for the two birds who had run him down to the water, and who continued standing on the margin emitting their loud authoritative cries. Coming out, he was again received as at first, and trotted briskly away with drumming sounds to a place with the others. No sooner was this done than the two, smoothing their feathers and changing their notes, resumed their march- ing about among their fellows, until another lapwing arrived, whereupon the whole ceremony was gone through again. Without a doubt this performance had nothing but play for a motive, the remarkable thing about it was that it was made to fit so admirably into the serious business which brought them together at that spot. They came, one by one, from all over the plain, at noon on a hot thirsty day, solely for refreshment, yet every bird on arrival instantly fell into the humour of the moment and took his appointed part and place in the game. It struck me at the time as a very strange thing, for well as I knew the bird, I had never witnessed an act pre- cisely like this before. Yet it does not stand alone, except in form; any day and every day we may see 56 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS acts in other species of social disposition or habits, which are undoubtedly inspired by a similar spirit. Little sham quarrels and flights and chases ; we see them squar- ing up to one another with threatening gestures and language; playing little practical jokes too, as when one approaches another in a friendly way and subtly watches him to snatch a morsel from his beak; or when another pretends to have found something exceptionally good and makes a great fuss about it to deceive a comrade, and when the other carries the joke further by capturing and carrying off the bit of dry stick or whatever it is, and pretending to feast on it with great satisfaction. These and a hundred other little playful acts of the kind are common enough and mingle with and are like a part of the food-getting or other business of the moment. The strangeness of the plover's performance was due to the singular form which play in them almost invariably takes — the military discipline in all their movements, their drumming sounds and commanding cries, the tremendous formality of it all ! The two birds were like little children pretending to be some mighty person- ages who owned everything and lorded it over the others. They were dispensers of the water of the lake, and were graciously pleased to allow any thirsty bird that came to drink and bathe, but only after the proper ceremonies had been performed ; also the drinking and bathing had to be cut short rather on this occasion. '■-,,^ V ^^■•^ ■y-'^^'^^y^'''^--^^^ The Black-He/Vdio) Gull CHAPTER VI A Wood by the Sea One of my favourite haunts at Wells, in Norfolk, is the pine wood, a mile or two long, growing on the slope of the sand-hills and extending from the Wells embank- ment to Holkham — a black strip with the yellow-grey dunes and the sea on one side and the wide level green marsh on the other. It is the roosting-place of all the crows that winter on that part of the coast, and I time my visits so as to be there in the evening. Rooks and daws also resort to that spot, and altogether there is a vast concourse of birds of the crow family. My habit is to stroll on to the embankment at about three o'clock to watch and listen to the geese on their way from their feeding-grounds to the sea, always flying too high for the poor gunners lying in wait for them. So poor, 57 S8 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS indeed, are some of these men that they will shoot at anything that flies by, even a hooded crow. They do not fire at it for fun — they can't afford to throw away a cartridge: one of them assured me that a crow, stewed with any other bird he might have in the larder — peewit, redshank, curley, or gull — goes down very well when you are hungry. Later I go on to the sea, meeting the last of the fishers, or toilers in the sands, returning before dark; men and boys in big boots and heavy wet clothes, burdened with spades and forks and baskets of bait and shell-fish. With slow, heavy feet they trudge past and leave the world to darkness and to me. On one of these evenings as I stood on the ridge of the dunes, looking seaward, when the tide was out and the level sands stretched away to the darkening horizon, an elderly woman made her appearance, and had evi- dently come all that way down to give her dog an evening run. Climbing over the ridge, she went down to the beach, where the dog, a big rough-haired terrier, was so delighted with the smooth sands that he began careering round her in wide circles at his utmost speed, barking the while with furious joy. The sound pro- duced an extraordinary effect; it was repeated and redoubled a hundred-fold from all over the flat sands. It was my first experience of an echo of that sort heard from above — perhaps if I had been below there would have been no echo — but I could not understand how it was produced. It was not like other echoes — exact repe- titions of the sounds emitted which come back to us A WOOD BY THE SEA 59 from walls and woods and cliffs — but was fainter and more dilTiiscd, the sounds running into each other and all seeming to run over the flat earth, now here, now there, and fading into mysterious whisperings. It was as if the vigorous barkings of the living dog had roused the ghosts of scores and hundreds of perished ones; that they had come out of the earth, and, unable to resist the contagion of his example and the "memory of an ancient joy," were all madly barking their ghost barks and scampering invisible over the sands. The chief thing to see was the crows coming in to roost from about four to six o'clock, arriving continually in small parties of from two or three to thirty or forty birds, until it was quite dark. The roosting-place has been shifted two or three times since I have known the wood, and, by a lucky chance, on the last occasion of their going to a fresh place I witnessed the removal and discovered its cause. For two evenings I had noticed a good deal of unrest among the roosting birds. This would begin at dusk, after they were all quietly settled down, when all at once there would be an out- burst of loud angry cawings at one point, as unmistak- able in its meaning as that sudden storm of indignation and protest frequently heard in one part of our House of Commons when the susceptibilities of the party or group of persons sitting together at that spot have been wantonly hurt by the honourable member addressing the House. It would subside only to break out by-and-by at some other spot, perhaps fifty yards away; and at some points the birds would rise up and wheel and hover 6o ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS overhead, cawing loudly for a minute or two before settling down again. I concluded that it was some creature dangerous to birds, probably a fox, prowling about among the trees and creating an alarm whenever they caught sight of him ; but though I watched for an hour I could detect nothing. On the third evening the disturbance was more wide- spread and persistent than usual, until the birds could endure it no longer. The cawing storms had been breaking out at various spots over an area of many acres of wood, when at length the whole vast concourse rose up and continued hovering and flying about for fifteen or twenty minutes, then settled once more on the top- most branches of the pines. Seen from the ridge on a level with the top of the wood the birds presented a strange sight, perched in hundreds, sitting upright and motionless, looking intensely black on the black tree- tops against the pale evening sky. By-and-by, as I stood in a green drive in the midst of the roosting-place, a fresh tempest of alarm broke out at some distance and travelled towards me, causing the birds to rise; and suddenly the disturber appeared, gliding noiselessly near the ground with many quick doul^lings among the boles — a barn owl, looking strangely white among the black trees! A little later there was a general rising of the entire multitude with a great uproar; they were unable to stand the appearance of that mysterious bird-shaped white creature gliding about under their roosting-trces an^ longer. For a minute or two the^ hovered over- A WOOD BY THE SEA 6i head, rising liighcr and higher in Ihc darkening sky, then hcgan streaming away over the wood to settle linally at another spot about half a mile away; and to that new roosting-placc tlu-y returned on subsequent evenings. It was a curious thing to have witnessed, for one does not think of this bird — "Hilarion's servant, the sage Crow" — as a nervous creature, subject to needless alarms ; but a few evenings later I was so fortunate as to witness something even more interesting. In this instance a pheasant was the chief actor, a species the field naturalist is apt to look askance at because it is a coddled species and the coddling process has incidentally produced a disastrous effect on our native wild-bird life. Once we rid our minds of these unfortunate associa- tions we recognize that this stranger in our woods is not only of a splendid appearance, but has that which is infinitely more than fine feathers — the intelligent spirit, the mind, that is in a bird. On a November evening I came out of the wood to a nice sheltered spot by the side of a dyke fringed with sedges and yellow reeds, and the wide green marsh spread out before me. There are many pheasants in the wood, whicli are accustomed to feed by day on the marsh or meadow^ lands; now I watched them coming in, flying and running, filling the wood with noise as they settled in their roosting-trees, clucking and crow- ing. In a little while they grew quiet, and I thought that all were at home and abed; but presently, while sweeping the level green expanse with my glasses, I 62 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS spied a cock pheasant about two hundred yards out, standing bunched up in a dejected attitude at the side of a dyke and wire fence with a few bramble bushes growing by it He looked sick, perhaps suffering from the effects of a stray pellet of lead in his body if not from some natural disease. I watched him for twenty or twenty-five minutes, during which he made not the slightest motion. Then a blackbird shot out from the wood, passing over my head, and flew straight out over the marsh, and, following it with my glasses, I saw it pitch on the bush near which the pheasant was standing. The pheasant instantly put up his head; the blackbird then flew down to him, and immediately both birds began moving about in search of food, the pheasant stepping quietly over the sward, pecking as he went; the blackbird making his quick little runs, now to this side, then to that, then on ahead and at intervals run- ning back to the other. Presently the sudden near loud cry of a carrion-crow flying to the wood startled the blackbird, and he rushed away to the bush, where he remained perched for about a minute; the other was not startled, but he at once left off feeding and stood motionless, patiently waiting till his companion returned to him, and they went on as before. The pheasant now discovered something to his taste, and for several min- utes remained still, pecking rapidly at the same spot, the other running about In quest of worms until he found and succeeded In pulling one out and spent some time over It; then came back again to the pheasant. During all this time I could not detect any other birds A WOOD BY THE SEA 63 from the vvofxl, not even a tliriish that feeds latest, on all the marsh ; they were all at roost, and it was impos- sible not to believe that these two were friends, accus- tomed to meet at that spot and feed together ; that when I first spied the pheasant, standing in that listless atti- tude after all his fellows had gone, he was waiting for his little black comrade and would not have his supper without him. It was getting dark when the blackbird at length flew off to the wood, and at once the pheasant, with head up, began walking in the same direction; then running and soon launching himself on the air he flew straight into the pines. My experience is that friendships between bird and bird, if the preference of two individuals for each other's company can be described by that word, is not at all uncommon, though I usually find that gamekeepers "don't quite seem to see it." That is only natural in their case; it is but a reflex effect of the gim in the hand on the keeper's mind. Yet one of the keepers on the estate, to whom I related this incident, although inclined to shake his head, told me he had observed a ringed dotterel and a redshank keeping company for a space of two or three months last year. It was im- possible not to see, he said, what close friends they were, as they invariably went together even when feed- ing with other shore birds. It is a thing we notice sometimes when the companionship is between two birds of different species, but it is probable that it is far more common among those of the same species, and 64 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS that among the gregarious and social kinds the unmated ones as a rule have their chums in the flock. The friendship I observed between the two birds at Wells reminded me of the case of a pheasant who had human friends; it is the only instance I have met with of a pheasant being kept as a household pet, and was related to me by my old friend the late Dr. Cunninghame Geikie, of Bournemouth, author of religious books. The bird was a handsome cock, owned by a lady of that place, who kept it for many years — ^he said nineteen, but he may have been mistaken about the time. The main thing was his disposition, his affection for his people and the fine courage he displayed in protecting them. His zeal in looking after them was at times inconvenient. He was particularly attached to his mis- tress, and liked to attend her on her walks, and made himself her guardian. But he was distrustful of strangers, and when she was at home he would keep watch, and if he saw a visitor approaching the house — some person he did not know — he would boldly sally forth to meet and order him off the premises with suit- able threatening gestures, which if not quickly obeyed would be followed by a brisk attack, the blows, with spurs, being aimed at the intruder's legs. v>d^^^ Z>^f The Mute Swan CHAPTER VII Friendship in Animals Some lordly-minded person has said that it is a misuse or an abuse of the word to describe as friendship the distinct preference for each other's company and habitual consorting together of two individuals among the lower animals ; because — this wise man continues — being lozvcr an'unals, they cannot rise to the height of that union between two minds, or souls, common among men. Where then does the capacity for this union begin? for who will venture to say that the two-legged upright or man-shaped mammalian of Tierra del Fuego or the Andaman Islands or of the Aruwhimi forest, is capable of a feeling beyond the power of elephants, dogs, seals, <5S 66 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS apes, and In fact of all other vertebrates — ^beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes? There is no broad line of demarca- tion between our noble selves and these cur poor rela- tions — even the wearers of feathers and scales. We have had to learn, not without reluctance and a secret bitterness, that even our best and highest qualities have their smail beginnings in these lowlier beings. That union or feeling of preference and attachment of an individual towards another of its own or of a different species, which I first began to observe in horses during my boyhood, is, like play, unconcerned with the satis- faction of bodily wants and the business of self- preservation and the continuance of the race. It is a manifestation of something higher in the mind, which shows that the lower animals are not wholly immersed in the struggle for existence, that they are capable in a small way, as we are In a large way, of escaping from and rising above it. Friendship is in fact the highest point to which the animal's mind can rise. For whereas play, which has Its origin in the purely physical state of well-being and in instinctive impulses universal among sentient beings, does indirectly serve a purpose in the animal's life, friendship can serve no useful pur- pose whatever and is the isolated act of an individual which clearly shows a perception on his part of differ- ences in the character of other individuals, also the will and power to chose from among them the one with which he finds himself most in harmony. Furthermore, such friendships do not come Into existence inevitably, or automatically, as the result of a feeling on the part FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 67 of an individual: the tcclinj; must be expressed or ex- hibited and approaches made. These may or may not be accepted, since tlie animal approached has a will of his own. The result is sometimes a very one-sided friendship, as in the case of an individual who forms an attachment for another which is like an infatuation, and who is happy if his presence is tolerated and who will go on day after day for weeks and months follow- ing the indifferent one about. In other cases the ad- vances are resented, and if persisted in will develop a quite savage animosity in their object, resulting in bites and kicks or blows with whatever weapon Nature may have endowed the species. All these actions may be easily observed in our domestic animals and are common enough, although probably not nearly so common in England as in the pastoral countries where the animals are not housed and fed but are allowed to lead a semi-independent life. I have said that I first observed friendship in horses. We usually kept fifteen or twenty, and as the country was all open then, our horses did sometimes take advantage of their liberty to clear out altogether; as a rule they kept to their own grazing ground within a mile or so of home, and when a fresh horse or horses were wanted some one was sent to drive the troop in. As a boy who wanted to spend at least half of every day on horseback I went after the troop very often and grew to be very familiar with their little ways. There were always horses in the troop that w^ent in couples, and who were chums, and inseparable. After one of a couple 68 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS had been In use for some hours or for a day, on being Hberated he would gallop off in quest of the troop and on catching sight of them neigh aloud to announce his coming. Then his chum would neigh in response and start off at a trot to meet him, and meeting him the two would stand for a few moments touching noses, which is the horse's way of kissing or expressing affec- tion. They would then go quietly back together to the others and begin grazing side by side. This book has birds for its subject, and we shall get to something about them by-and-by; just now I want to emphasize the fact of a feeling and union among animals generally, which is in its nature identical with what we call friendship in human beings. The fact is more readily accepted when we treat of mammals, just because they suckle their young and have hair instead of feathers to clothe them. We, evolutionists think, were hairy too in our far past, and some mammals, like ourselves, have lost their hairy covering. That some animals are capable of a strong affection for a human being or master is a fact familiar to every one; we think instantly of the dog in this connexion; the dog is indeed commonly described as the "Friend of Man," but if the description implies a superiority in this respect it is certainly unjust to other species. An acquaintance of mine keeps a timber wolf as a pet — the biggest, most powerful, probably the most fero- cious of all the numerous varieties of that terrible beast. Yet his owner assures me that his wolf is as much attached to him as any dog could be to a man, that he FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 69 would trust him as lie would the most intelligent, affec- tionate, and gentlest-mannered dog. Though so big, this wolf is privileged to lie on the hearthrug at his feet, and if there are children abcjut they are permitted to sit on or roll over him, to pull his ears and open his niiglUy mouth to look at his fangs. It is true that the wolf is next door to tlic dog, but the fox is not ([uite so near a neighbour although he lives not far off; he is specialized in a different direction, and on account of this specialization, of his nature, his genius, one would hardly suppose him capable of a very close friend- ship with a human master. Let mc relate here the story of Peter the fox, for the truth of which I vouch al- though I am not at liberty to give the name and address of its owner. Peter's mistress is a lady living in a Shropshire village, and the lady and fox are so much to one another that they are not happy when apart. When she goes for a walk or to make a call she takes the fox, just as Mary took her little lamb, and she laughs at those who say warningly tliat a fox makes a dangerous pet that his temper is uncertain and his teeth sharp; also that he has an ineradicable weakness for certain things — things with feathers, for example. Peter, she affirms, never did and never will do anything he ought not to do and is moreover the sweetest-tempered and most affectionate pet that any person ever possessed. After having had Peter for about a year he vanished and his loss was a great grief to her, and it was no consolation to be told by her friends that it was just 70 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS what they had thought would happen, that sooner or later the call of the wild would come and prove irre- sistible. One afternoon, when Peter had been gone several days, she remembered him and was heavy at heart and it then first came into her mind to try an experiment. If her fox still lived, she thought, where would he be but in the wood a mile or so from the village? There she would go and seek for him. It was near sunset when she reached the wood, and after making her way to its innermost part she stood still and raising her voice to its highest pitch sent forth a loud shrill call — Peter — Pee-ter — Peee-ter! and then waited. By-and-by she heard a sound, and looking in the direction it came from she spied Peter himself coming towards her at his topmost speed, making the dead leaves fly about him with the wind he created; but when he got to her there was no touching him, though she was eager to clasp her dear recovered friend in her arms, for he was beside himself with joy and could only rush round and round her in a wide circle and then charging straight at her leaped clear over her head, and then again, and then a third time! This sounds incredible, but the lady sticks to it that her fox did accomplish this feat, and says that she was astonished at the sight of its transports of joy at finding her. Then, when he had thus worked off his excitement, they went home together, Peter trotting along at her side and breaking out from time to time into fresh demonstrations of delight and affection. FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 71 Friendship among birds is less remarked than it is in mammals, simply, 1 believe, because their inner life is less openly revealed to us; in other words, because they have wings to fly with, and quicker, brighter, more variable or volatile minds to match the aerial life. Numbers of species pair for life, including many that are gregarious; I take it that in such cases the bond which unites male and female throughout the year is essentially the same as that between two horses, or goats, or cows, or llamas, or any other species, wild or domestic, that become attached to one another. The union is different in origin, but once the sexual motive is over and done with the life-partners are no more than friends or chums. Again, birds being so free and light in their motions do not keep so close together as mammals do, hence a comradeship between two in a crowd is not easily detected. We notice and are ar- rested by it when a friendship exists between two widely-different species, as in such cases as those given in the last chapter of a pheasant and a blackbird, and of a ringed dotterel and a redshank, and of another I observed in South America of a lesser yellowshanks and a pectoral sandpiper who were inseparable, even when mixed in a flock of their own species. Cases of birds becoming strongly attached to a human being are quite common — so common indeed that any industrious person could compile a volume of them. One of a pheasant and a lady has been given In the last chapter and I had set down several more to relate in this one, but in view of the multiplicity of subjects. 72 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS or adventures, to be treated in the book they must be left out. Or all but one given here for a special reason. This is the case of a jackdaw which was found last year, unable to fly, and taken home by a boy in the village of Tilshead in the South Wiltshire downs. In a very few days the bird recovered from his weakness and was perfectly well and able to fly again, but he did not go away; and the reason of his remaining ap- peared to be not that he had been well treated but because he had formed an extraordinary attachment, not, as one would naturally suppose, to the boy who had rescued and fed him but to another, smaller boy, who lived in the next cottage! It was quite unmistakable; the bird, free to go away if he liked, began to spend his time hanging about the cottage of his chosen little friend. He wanted to be always with him, and when the children went to school in the morning the daw would accompany them, and flying into the schoolroom after them settle himself on a perch where he would sit until the release came. But the proceedings were always too long for his patience, and from time to time he would emit a loud caw of remonstrance, which would set the children tittering, and eventually he was turned out and the door shut against him. He then took to sitting on the roof until school was over, where- upon he would fly down to the shoulder of his little friend and go home with him. In the same way he would follow his friend to church on Sunday morning, but even there he could not repress his loud startling caw, which made the congregation smile and cast up FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 73 its eyes at the roof. My friciul the vicar, wlio by the by is a lover of birds, could not tolerate this, and the result was that iIk- daw had to be caught and conlincd every day during school and church hours. There are three or four more jackdaw anccd(jtcs among those I am compelled to leave out. No doubt some species of birds are much more capable of these attachments than others: thus, the bullhnch, among caged birds, is noted for his affectionate disposition and many instances have been recorded of the bird's death from pure grief after losing its mistress. The daw too is a bird of that character, in spite of his wicked little grey eyes and love of mischief. Probably he was first called Jack on account of his human qualities; we might also describe him as the Friendly Daw. I have told this story just to show that it is not in every case, as some imagine, mere cupboard love that inspires an attachment of this kind. An even more remarkable case than that of the daw remains to be told. A friend of mine, an Anglo- Argentine residing at Buenos Ayres, one day when out duck-shooting winged a teal, one of a common species — Qncrqucdula flavirostris. The sight and feel of the bird when he had it in his hand, its graceful shape and beautiful plumage and the bright frightened eyes and beating heart, softened him so that he could not kill it, and putting it in his bag he took it home; and after bandaging the broken wings the best way he could, he placed the bird in the large courtyard and supplied it with food and water. In a short time its wound healed 74 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS but it did no recover its power of flight and made no attempt to escape. It became perfectly tame and would come at call to be fed or caressed. The strange thing was that although all the people of the house were in- terested in the teal and made it a pet, its whole affection was given to the man who had shot it. To the others it was indifferent, although they were always in the house taking notice of and petting it, while this chosen friend was absent on business in the city every day from morning to the late afternoon. The teal would keep near him when he had breakfast, then accompany him to the door opening out of the courtyard to the street, and having seen him off she would return to her place and pass her day in a quiet contented manner as if she had forgotten all about the absent one. But invariably at about four o'clock in the afternoon she would go to the open street door to wait for his return, and if he was an hour or so late she would sit there the whole time on the threshold, her beak turned city- wards, to the astonishment of the passers-by. On his appearance she was all joy and would run to his feet, nodding her head and flirting her wings and emitting all the quacking and other curious little sounds the bird uses to express its happy emotions. Like most teals it Is a loquacious bird, and very excitable. After that the great happiness of the teal was to have permission to sit at his feet, when he settled himself in his chair to rest and read. She would actually sit on his foot. It happened that some years ago I told this story of the teal in an article in a monthly magazine. My belief FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 75 was tliat it was a very strange story, that the experience of my Buenus Ayres friend was absolutely unic^ue — for who would have imagined that any other person in the world had found a loved and affectionate pet in a teal, which he had himself shot with the intention of eating it? But I soon received a letter from a gentleman re- siding in South Kensington who said he had read the incident of the teal with astonishment, that it had ap- peared to him just as if I had taken an incident which occurred in South Africa, transferred it to South America, and slightly altering the circumstances related the first half of the story. My informant had been out to The Cape, and while there went to stay with a friend on his estate. His friend told him that one day when out shooting he winged a teal and on picking it up experienced so strong a pang of compassion for it that he took it home and set to work to bind up the wound, intending if the bird recovered the use of its wings to restore it to liberty. In a little while the teal became attached to him, precisely as in the case I had described, and would trot about after him all over the place just like a little dog. Eventually, when pairing time came round again the teal flew away to the marshes, for it had recovered the full use of its wings, and he never expected to see or at all events to recognize his quacking little friend again. One day when out shooting he had his eye on a bunch of teal flying past at a considerable distance when all at once one of the birds detached itself from the flock and came swiftly towards him and pitched at his very feet! It ^S ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS was his lost pet, and the teal appeared as deHghted at the meeting as he was. After staying with him a few minutes expressing its pleasure and receiving caresses it flew away again in search of its companions. Since that encounter there had been others at long intervals, the teal always recognizing its old master and friend at a distance and flying straight to him, but it had never returned to the house. One imagines that the two persons concerned in these incidents, one in South Africa, the other in South America, cannot now enjoy eating or even shooting teal as much as they did formerly. Friendships between bird and bird of the same species, if we exclude the companionship of such as pair for life, are exceeding difficult, almost impossible, to detect for reasons already given. If it were not so we should probably find as many pairs of inseparables in any flock of bachelor chaffinches in winter as in a herd of horses or cattle existing in a semi-feral state. Another thing to be borne in mind is that it is possible to mistake for friendship an action which, at all events in its origin, is of a different nature. The following cases will serve as illustrations. One relates to an exotic species, the military starling of the pampas — a bird of a social disposition, like most of its family, the troupials. Breeding over, the birds unite in large flocks and lead a gipsy life on the great plains. They are always on the move, the flock present- ing an extended front, the beaks and scarlet breasts all turned one way, the hindmost birds continually flying FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 77 forward and dropping down in or a little in advance of the front line. It is a pretty spectacle, one I was never tired of seeing. One day I was sitting on my horse watching a tlock feeding and travelling in their leisurely manner when I noticed a little distance behind the others a bird sitting motionless on the ground and two others keeping close to it, one on each side. These two had finished examining the ground and prodding at the roots of the grass at the spot, and were now anxious to go forward and rejoin the company, but were held back by the other one. On my going to them they all flew up and on, and I then saw that the one that had hung back had a broken leg. Perhaps it had not long been broken and he had not yet accommodated himself to the changed conditions in which he had to get about on the ground and find his food. I followed and found that, again and again, after the entire scarlet- breasted army had moved on, the lame bird remained behind, his two impatient but faithful companions still keeping with him. Thev would not fly until he flew, and when on the wing still kept their places at his side and on overtaking the flock all three would drop down together. The next case is from Penzance and was told to me when I was staring there. A lady of that town, a member of one of its oldest and most distinguished families, is a great bird-lover and feeds the birds during the winter on her lawn. She noticed that a blackbird and thrush always came together to the food, and then that the blackbird fed the other, picking up the morsels 78 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS and placing them In its open mouth. In looking more closely it was discovered that the thrush had lost its beak: this had been cut off close to the head, probably by a steel or a sudden-death spring trap, such as the children in Cornwall commonly use to catch or kill small birds. The bird was incapable of feeding itself. Another case of a beakless bird with a friend was told to me by Mr. E. Selley of Sidmouth, a gardener and local naturalist. His father kept a magpie in a large hutch surrounded by wires through which small birds would pass in to steal the food. Among these was a robin that had lost its beak in a steel trap and this bird the magpie befriended though he was at enmity with the others and hunted them out of his house. The robin with no beak to peck with could only pick up small crumbs, and the magpie taking a piece of bread on its perch would pick it into small pieces to feed the robin. "It sounds like a fairy tale," said Mr. Selley; it is however a very credible kind of fairy tale to those who know a bird. Yet another case told to me recently by a friend who was himself a witness to it. A lark was kept in a cage hanging against the front wall of the house, and it was noticed that some sparrows had formed the habit of clinging to the wires and feeding from the seed-box. To stop this plundering the box was transferred from the front to the back of the cage, where it was well out of their reach. Nevertheless their visits continued and they appeared to be faring as well as ever. With a little closer watching it was discovered that the lark FRIENDSFIIP IN ANIMALS 79 itself was feeding them, not by putting the seed into their beaks but by conveying it from the box to the other side of the cage-floor where the sparrows could get at it. I take it that in these instances the act does not pro- ceed from friendsliip but from the helping instinct common in animals of social habits. We know it best in tlie large mammals — cattle, swine, peccaries, deer, elephants, and many more. Even the unsocial cat will sometimes feed a fellow-cat. In birds it appears to have its origin in the parental instinct of feeding and protecting the young from danger. A young bird that has lost its parents will sometimes find a response to its hunger-call from a bird stranger, and in some in- stances the stranger is of a different species. It may be noted here that, in some species, the incubating female when fed by the male reverts to the hunger-cry and gestures of the young. The cry of distress too in an old bird, when captured or injured, which excites its fellows and brings them to its rescue, is like the cry of distress and terror in the young. Many other cases one meets with of a close com- panionship between individuals result from the impa- tience of solitude in a social species. So intolerable is loneliness to some animals that they will attach them- selves to any creature they can scrape acquaintance with, without regard to its kind or habits or of disparity in size. I remember a case of this kind which was re- corded many years ago, of a pony confined by itself in a field and a partridge — a solitary bird who was perhaps 8o ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS the only one of its species in that place. They were always to be seen together, the partridge keeping with the pony where he grazed, and when he rested from grazing sitting contentedly at his feet. No doubt this companionship made their lonely lives less irksome. Another even stranger case must be told in conclusion — the sad case of a lonely swan in search of a friend, and as it is a story of the "incredible" sort I am glad I have permission to give the names of the persons who witnessed the affair. The place is Little Chelmsford Hall, near Chelmsford, and the witnesses are Lady Pennefather and her friend Miss Guinness, who resides with her. Near the house there is an artificial lake of considerable length, fed by a stream which flows into the grounds on one side and out at the other. Lake and stream are stocked with trout. A pair of swans are kept on the lake and three or four years ago they reared a single young one, which after some months when it was fully grown they began to persecute. The young swan however could not endure to be alone, and although driven furiously off to a distance a hundred times a day he would still return. Eventually he was punished so mercilessly that he gave it up and went right away to the further end of the lake and made that part his home. About this time Miss Guinness started making a series of water-colour sketches at that end of the lake, and her presence was a happiness to the swan. Invariably on her appearance he would start swimming rapidly towards her, then leaving the water he would follow her about until she sat down to do a FRIENDSHIP IM ANIMALS 8i sketch, whereupon tlie swan would settle itself by her side to stay contentedly with her until she finished. This went on for five or six weeks till the sketchinj^ was done and Miss Guinness went away on a visit. Again the jx^or bird was alone and miserable until a man was sent to work in the shrubbery by the lake and at once the swan made a companion of him ; each morn- ing it would come from the lake to meet him to spend the whole day in his company. In due time the work was finished and the man went away. Once more the swan was miserable, and it made the lady of the house unhappy to see it, so anxious appeared the bird to be with her whenever she went near the lake, so distressed when she left it. All at once there was a change in its behaviour ; it was no longer waiting and watching for a visitor to the lake-side and ready to leave the water on her appearance. It now appeared quite contented to be alone and would rest on the water at the same spot for an hour at a time, floating motionless or else propelling itself with such a slow and gentle movement of its oars as to make it appear almost stationary. It was an astonishing change but a welcome one, as the unhappiness of the swan had begim to make everybody feel bad and now it looked as if the poor bird had become reconciled to a solitary' life. A little later the reason of this change appeared when the extraordinary- discovery was made that the swan was not alone after all, that he had a friend who was constantly with him — a big trout! The fish had his place at the side of the bird, just below the surface, and together they would 82 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS rest and together move like one being. Those who first saw it could hardly credit the evidence of their own senses, but in a short time they became convinced that this amazing thing had come to pass that those two ill-assorted beings had actually become companions. How can we explain it? The swan, we have seen, was in a state of misery at his isolation and doubtless ready to attach himself to and find a solace in the com- pany of any living creature on land or in the water, and a fish happened to be the only creature there. But how about the trout? I can only suppose that he got some profit out of the partnership, that the swan when feeding by the margin accidently fed the trout by shak- ing small insects into the water, and that in this way the swan became associated with food in what we are pleased to call the trout's mind. The biologist denies that it — the poor fish — has a mind at all, since it has no cortex to its brain, but we need not trouble ourselves with this question just now. I also think it possible that the swan may have touched or stroked the back of his strange friend with his beak, just as one swan would carecs another swan, and that this contact was grateful to the trout. Fish have as much delight in being gently stroked as other creatures that wear a skin or scales. I have picked up many "wild worms in woods" and many a wild toad, if wild toads there be, and have quickly overcome their wildness and made them contented to be in my hands by gently stroking them on the back. The sequel remains to be told. There came to the FRIENDSHIP IN ANIMALS 83 Hall a visitor from London, who bcinpj a keen angler got up very early in the morning and went to the lake to try and get a trout for breakfast. About eight o'clock he returned and finding his hostess down proudly exhibited to her a magnificent trout he had caught. He had not looked for such a big one, and he would never forget catching this particular trout for another reason. A wonderful thing had happened when he hcKjked it. One of the swans was there on the water, and followed the fish up when it was hooked, and when he drew it to land the swan came out and dashed at and attacked him with the greatest fury. He had a good deal of trouble to beat her off! "Oil, what a pity!" cried the lady. "You have killed the poor swan's friend!" From that time the swan was more unhappy than ever ; the sight of it became positively painful to my com- passionate friends, and by-and-by hearing of an acquaint- ance in another part of the country who wanted a swan they sent it to him. The Pheasant CHAPTER VIII The Sacred Bird Phasianus Colchicus It was hardly necessary to add the scientific name to any British species spoken of as "sacred." Certainly it is not the ibis and no mistake is possible seeing that England is not ancient Egypt, or Hindustan, or Samoa, or any remote barbarous land, where certain of the creatures are regarded with a kind of religious venera- tion. We call our familiar pheasant the sacred bird to express condemnation of the persons who devote 84 THE SACRED BIRD 85 themselves witli excessive zcnl to plic.isnnt-prcscrvinp for the sake of sport. To shoot a pheasant is undoubtedly the best way to kill it. and would still he the best way — certainly better than wrinj^nnj,' its neck — even if these semi-domestic birds were wholly domestic, as I am perfectly sure they were in the time of the Romans who first introduced them into these islands. I am sure of it because this Asiatic ground-l)ird, which in two thousand years has not become wholly native, and. as ornithologists say, is in no sense an English bird, C(Xild not have existed and been abundant in the conditions which prevailed in Roman times. The fact tiiat pheasant bones come next in quantity to those of the domestic fowl in the ash and bone pits examined by experts during the ex- cavations at Silchester shows that the bird was a common article of food. The country about Silchester was a vast oak forest at that period, probablv very sparsely inhabited; a portion of the forest exists to this day, and is in fact one of my favourite haunts. The fox, stoat, and sparrowhawk were not the only enemies of the pheasant then; the wolf existed, the wild cat, the marten, and the foumart; while the list of rapacious birds included the eagle, goshawk, buzzard, kite, hen- harrier, peregrine falcon, and h(jbby, as well as all the species which still survive, only in very much larger numbers. Then there were the crows: judging from the number of bones of the raven found at Silchester we can only suppose that this chief and most destructive of tlie corvida; was a protected species and existed in 86 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS a semi-domestic state and was extremely abundant in and around Calleva — probably at all the Roman stations. It is probable that a few tame pheasants escaped from time to time into the woods, also some may have been turned out in the hope that they would become ac- climatised, and we may suppose that a few of the most hardy birds survived and continued the species until later times; but for hundreds of years succeeding the Romano-British period the pheasant must have been a rarity in English woods. And a rarity it remains down to this day in all places where it is left to itself, in spite of the extermination of most of its natural enemies. Unhappily for England the fashion or craze for this bird became common among landowners in recent times — the desire to make it artificially abundant so that an estate which yielded a dozen or twenty birds a year to the sportsman would be made to yield a thousand. This necessitated the destruction of all the wild life supposed in any way and in any degree to be inimical to the pro- tected species. Worse still, men to police the woods, armed with guns, traps, and poison, were required. Consider what this means — men who are hired to pro- vide a big head of game, privileged to carry a gim day and night all the year round, to shoot just what they please! For who is to look after them on their own ground to see that they do not destroy scheduled species ? They must be always shooting something; that is simply a reflex effect of the liberty they have and of the gim in the hand. Killing becomes a pleasure to them, and with or without reason or excuse they are always doing THE SACRED BIRD 87 it — always adding to the list of creatures to be extir- pated, and when these fail adding others. "I know perfectly well," said a keeper to me, "that tlie nightjar is harmless; I don't believe a word about its swallow- ing pheasant's eggs, though many keepers think they do. I slKH)t them, it is true, but only for pleasure." So it has come about that wherever pheasants are strictly pre- served, hawks — including those that prey on mice, moles, wasps, and small birds; also the owls, and all the birds of the crow family, saving the rook on account of the landowner's sentiment in its favour; and after them the nightjar and the woodpeckers and most other species above the size of a chaffinch — are treated as "vermin." The case of the keeper who shot all the nightingales because their singing kept the pheasants awake at night sounds like a fable. But it is no fable ; there are several instances of this having been done, all well authenticated. Here is another case which came under my own eyes. It is of an old heronry in a southern county, in the park of a great estate about which there w'as some litigation a few years back. On my last visit to this heronry at the breeding season I found the nests hanging empty and desolate in the trees near the great house, and was told that the new head keeper had persuaded the great nobleman who had recently come into possession of the estate to allow him to kill the herons because their cries frightened the pheasants. They were shot on the nests after breeding began; yet the great nobleman who allowed this to be done is known to the world as a humane and enlightened man, and, I hear, boasts that 88 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS he has never shot a bird in his Hfe! He allowed it to be done because he wanted pheasants for his sporting friends to have their shoot in October, and he supposed that his keeper knew best what should be done. Another instance, also on a great estate of a great nobleman in southern England. Throughout a long mid-June day I heard the sound of firing in the woods, beginning at about eight o'clock in the morning and lasting until dark. The shooters ranged over the whole woods; I had never, even in October, heard so much firing on an estate in one day. I enquired of several persons, some employed on the estate, as to the mean- ing of all this firing, and was told that the keeper was ridding the woods of some of the vermin. More than that they refused to say ; but by-and-by I found a person to tell me just what had happened. The head keeper had got twenty or thirty persons, the men with guns and a number of lads with long poles with hooks to pull nests down, and had set himself to rid the woods of birds that were not wanted. All the nests found, of whatever species, were pulled down, and all doves, wood- peckers, nuthatches, blackbirds, missel and song thrushes, shot; also chaffinches and many other small birds. The keeper said he was not going to have the place swarm- ing with birds that were no good for anything, and were always eating the pheasants' food. The odd thing in this case was that the owner of the estate and his son, a distinguished member of the House of Commons, are both great bird-lovers, and at the very time that this hideous massacre in mid-June was going on they THE SACRED BIRD 89 were tcllinp^ their friends in LoiuIdu lliat .'i pair of birds of a fine species, lonj^' extirpated in southern Knj^hmd, had come to their \vo