JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST. (continued 4)

It was a very ancient observation, and modern investigation seems fully to confirm it, that many of the serpent race captured their prey by infatuation or intimidation; and there can be no doubt of the fact, that instinctive terror will subdue the powers of some creatures, rendering them stupefied and motionless at the 144sudden approach of danger. We have two kinds of petty hawks, the sparrow-hawk (falco nisus) and the kestrel (falco tinunculus), that seem fully to impress upon their destined prey this species of intimidation. A beautiful male bull-finch, that sat harmlessly pecking the buds from a blackthorn by my side, when overlooking the work of a laborer, suddenly uttered the instinctive moan of danger, but made no attempt to escape into the bush, seemingly deprived of the power of exertion. On looking round, a sparrow-hawk was observed on motionless wing gliding rapidly along the hedge, and, passing me, rushed on its prey with undeviating certainty. There was fully sufficient time from the moment of perception for the bull-finch to escape; but he sat still, waiting the approach of death, an unresisting victim. We have frequently observed these birds, when perched on an eminence, insidiously attentive to a flock of finches and yellow-hammers basking in a hedge, and after due consideration apparently single out an individual. Upon its moving for its prey, some wary bird has given the alarm, and most of the little troop scuttle immediately into the hedge; but the hawk holds on its course, and darts upon a selected object. If baffled, it seldom succeeds upon another; and so fixed are its eyes upon this one individual, that, as if unobservant of its own danger, it snatches up its morsel at our very sides. A pigeon on the roof of the dovecot seems selected from its fellows, the hawk rarely snatching at more than one terror-stricken bird. The larger species of hawks appear to employ no powers excepting those of wing, but pursue and capture by celerity and strength.

We converse annually upon early and late seasons; and such things there are. A mild winter, a warm February and March, will influence greatly the growth of vegetation: not that a primrose under that bank, or a violet under the shelter of this hedge, affords us any criterion of earliness; but a general shading of green, an expansion of buds, an incipient unfolding of leaves, gives notice of the spring’s advance. The principal blossoming of plants usually takes place at nearly stated 145periods; but particular mildness in the atmosphere and additional warmth in the soil, accelerate this season; and of all the evils which threaten the horticulturist, an early spring is most to be deprecated. An April breathing odors, wreathed in verdure and flowers, the willow wren sporting in the copse, the swallow skimming over the pool, lambs racing in the daisied mead, may be a beautiful sight to contemplate,—

“Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyrs blow;”

but it is like the laugh of irony, the smile that lures to ruin,

“Which, hushed in grim repose, awaits his certain prey.”

Then comes a ruthless May, with Winter in her train, who, with his frosty edge, unpitying shears away all the expectancies, the beautiful promise of the year; and we have to await returning seasons, and patient hope for better things. A garden pining and prostrate from the effects of a churlish, frosty May, leaves crisp and blackened, flowers withered, torn, and scattered around, are a melancholy sight—the vernal hectic that consumes the fairest offspring of the nursery. There is a plant, however, the white thorn (mespilus oxycanthus), the May of our rustics, common in all places and situations, that affords a good example of general steadiness to time, uninfluenced by partial effects. An observation of above twenty years upon this plant has proved how little it deviates in its blossoming in one season from another; and, under all the importunities and blandishments of the most seductive Aprils, I have in all that period never but twice seen more than a partial blossom by the first of May. We hail our first-seen swallow as a harbinger of milder days and summer enjoyments; but the appearance of our birds of passage is not greatly to be depended upon, as I have reason to apprehend from much observation. They will be accelerated or retarded in the time of their departure by the state of the wind in the country whence they take their flight; they travel much by night, requiring in many instances the light of the moon to direct them; and the actual time of their arrival is difficult to ascertain, as they steal into 146our hedges and copses unperceived. If the weather be bright or warm, their voices are heard; if gloomy and cold, they will lie secreted till the call of hunger or of love intimates their presence. Though we rarely see these birds in their transits, yet I have at times, on a calm bright evening in November, heard high in the air the redwing and the fieldfare, on progress to a destined settlement, manifested by the signal-notes of some leading birds to their scattered followers. These conductors of their flocks are certainly birds acquainted with the country over which they travel, their settlements here being no promiscuous dispersion: it being obvious that many pairs of birds return to their ancient haunts, either old ones which had bred there, or their offspring. The butcher-bird successively returns to a hedge in one of my fields, influenced by some advantage it derives from that situation, or from a preference to the spot where hatched; but we have perhaps no bird more attached to peculiar situations than the gray flycatcher (muscicapa grisola), one pair, or their descendants, frequenting year after year the same hole in the wall, or the same branch on the vine or the plum. Being perfectly harmless, and hence never molested, they become

“Enamor’d with their ancient haunts,

——and hover round.”

I once knew a pair of these birds bring off two broods in one season from the same nest. This flycatcher delights in eminences. The naked spray of a tree, or projecting stone in a building, or even a tall stick in the very middle of the grass-plot, is sure to attract its attention, as affording an uninterrupted view of its winged prey; and from this it will be in constant activity a whole summer’s day, capturing its food and returning to swallow it. The digestion of some birds must be remarkably rapid, to enable them to receive such constant replenishments of food. The swift and the swallow are feeding from the earliest light in the morning till the obscurity of evening; the quantities of cherries and raspberries that the blackcap and pettichaps 147will eat are surprising, as they are unremittingly consuming from morning till night; and this flycatcher seems to require a proportion of food equal to any bird, being in constant progress, capturing one moment, and resting the next. But fruit and insects are with us only for a short season; and their privations, when these no longer afford a supply, indicate, that they possess the power of abstinence, as well as that of consumption.

We observed this summer two common thrushes frequenting the shrubs on the green in our garden. From the slenderness of their forms, and the freshness of their plumage, we pronounced them to be birds of the preceding summer. There was an association and friendship between them, that called our attention to their actions: one of them seemed ailing, or feeble from some bodily accident; for though it hopped about, yet it appeared unable to obtain sufficiency of food; its companion, an active sprightly bird, would frequently bring it worms, or bruised snails, when they mutually partook of the banquet; and the ailing bird would wait patiently, understand the actions, expect the assistance of the other, and advance from his asylum upon its approach. This procedure was continued for some days, but after a time we missed the fostered bird, which probably died, or by reason of its weakness met with some fatal accident. We have many relations of the natural affection of animals; and whoever has attended to the actions of the various creatures we are accustomed to domesticate about us can probably add many other instances from their own observation. Actions which are in any way analogous to the above, when they are performed by mankind, arise most commonly from duty, affection, pity, interest, pride; but we are not generally disposed to allow the inferior orders of creation the possession of any of these feelings, except perhaps the last: yet when we have so many instances of attachment existing between creatures similar and dissimilar in their natures, which are obvious to all, and where no interest can possibly arise as a motive; when we mark the varieties of disposition which they manifest under uniform treatment, their 148various aptitudes and comprehensions, sensibility or inattention to sounds, &c., it seems but reasonable to consider them as gifted with latent passions; though being devoid of mind to stimulate or call them into action by any principle of volition or virtue, how excited to performance we know no more than we do the motives of many of their bodily actions! The kindnesses and attentions which the maternal creature manifests in rearing its young, and the assistance occasionally afforded by the paternal animal, during the same period, appears to be a natural inherent principle universally diffused throughout creation; but when we see a sick or maimed animal supplied and attended by another, which we suppose gifted with none of the stimuli to exertion that actuate our conduct, we endow them by this denial with motives with which we ourselves are unacquainted; and at last we can only relate the fact, without defining the cause.

The throstle is a bird of great utility in a garden where wall fruit is grown, by reason of the peculiar inclination which it has for feeding upon snails, and very many of them he does dislodge in the course of the day. When the female is sitting, the male bird seems to be particularly assiduous in searching them out, and I believe he feeds his mate during that period, having frequently seen him flying to the nest with food, long before the eggs were hatched; after this time the united labors of the pair destroy numbers of these injurious creatures. That he will regale himself frequently with a tempting gooseberry, or bunch of currants, is well known, but his services entitle him to a very ample reward. The blackbird associates with these thrushes in our gardens, but makes no compensation for our indulgences after his song ceases, as he does not feed upon the snail; but the thrush benefits us through the year by his propensities for this particular food, and every grove resounds with his harmony in the season; and probably if this race suffered less from the gun of the Christmas popper, the gardener might find much benefit in his ensuing crop of fruit, from the forbearance.

149We have no bird, I believe, more generally known, thought of, or mentioned with greater indifference, perhaps contempt, than the common sparrow (fringilla domestica), “that sitteth alone on the house-top;” yet it is an animal that nature seems to have endowed with peculiar characteristics, having ordained for it a very marked provision, manifested in its increase and maintenance, notwithstanding the hostile attacks to which it is exposed. A dispensation that exists throughout creation is brought more immediately to our notice by the domestic habits of this bird. The natural tendency that the sparrow has to increase will often enable one pair of birds to bring up fourteen or more young ones in the season. They build in places of perfect security from the plunder of larger birds and vermin. Their art and ingenuity in commonly attaching their nests beneath that of the rook, high in the elm, a bird whose habits are perfectly dissimilar, and with which they have no association whatever, making use of their structure only for a defence to which no other bird resorts, manifest their anxiety and contrivance for the safety of their broods. With peculiar perseverance and boldness, they forage and provide for themselves and their offspring; will filch grain from the trough of the pig, or contend for its food with the gigantic turkey; and, if scared away, their fears are those of a moment, as they quickly return to their plunder; and they roost protected from all the injuries of weather. These circumstances tend greatly to increase the race, and in some seasons their numbers in our corn-fields towards autumn are prodigious; and did not events counteract the increase of this army of plunderers, the larger portion of our bread corn would be consumed by them. But their reduction is as rapidly accomplished as their increase, their love of association bringing upon them a destruction, which a contrary habit would not tempt. They roost in troops in our ricks, in the ivy on the wall, &c., and are captured by the net: they cluster on the bush, or crowd on the chaff by the barn-door, and are shot by dozens at a time, or will rush in numbers, one following another, into the trap. These and various 150other engines of destruction so reduce them in the winter season, that the swarms of autumn gradually diminish, till their numbers in spring are in no way remarkable. I have called them plunderers, and they are so; they are benefactors likewise, seeming to be appointed by nature as one of the agents for keeping from undue increase another race of creatures, and by their prolificacy they accomplish it. In spring and the early part of the summer, before the corn becomes ripe, they are insectivorous, and their constantly increasing families require an unceasing supply of food. We see them every minute of the day in continual progress, flying from the nest for a supply, and returning on rapid wing with a grub, a caterpillar, or some reptile; and the numbers captured by them in the course of these travels are incredibly numerous, keeping under the increase of these races, and making ample restitution for their plunderings and thefts. When the insect race becomes scarce, the corn and seeds of various kinds are ready; their appetite changes, and they feed on these with undiminished enjoyment.

We have scarcely another bird, the appetite of which is so accommodating in all respects as that of the house-sparrow. It is, I believe, the only bird that is a voluntary inhabitant with man, lives in his society, and is his constant attendant, following him wherever he fixes his residence. It becomes immediately an inhabitant of the new farm-house, in a lonely place or recent inclosure, or even in an island, will accompany him into the crowded city, and build and feed there in content, unmindful of the noise, the smoke of the furnace, or the steam-engine, where even the swallow and the marten, that flock around him in the country, are scared by the tumult, and leave him: but the sparrow, though begrimed with soot, does not forsake him; feeds on his food, rice, potatoes, or almost any other extraneous substance he may find in the street; looks to him for his support, and is maintained almost entirely by the industry and providence of man. It is not known in a solitary and independent state.

Though I remember no bird so peculiarly associated 151with the human race as this is, yet there are other animals that seem dependent on man for support, or at least that find his means subservient to their comforts, and domesticate themselves with him. The meadow and the long-tailed mouse occasionally become foragers in our gardens and domains, when a natural supply of food becomes difficult of attainment, yet they are not wholly settlers with us; but the common mouse (mus domesticus) resorts entirely to our premises, and seems to exist wholly on food of our providing. In towns it accommodates its appetite to the variety of sustenance it finds there; and will enjoy the preserve in the pot, the cheese in the rack, or the pie in the pantry. In the country it will ransack the cupboard, live in the barn, or colonize in our ricks. Still, in all these cases, the store and provision of man are its delight, and its only resource; and it will even quit a residence which is abandoned by its provider. It is true it maintains the same love of liberty as its celebrated ancestor is reported to have done; but the simplicity of manners and taste of the sage, the “hollow tree, the oaten straw,” have been abandoned; it has become pleased with household comforts, and a luxurious citizen in its appetite.

The rat (mus rattus), too, perhaps, may be united with these companions of mankind. Not knowing it in an independent state, we cannot say what its resources might be, but so sagacious and powerfully endowed an animal could always provide for its own necessities; yet it prefers our provision to any precarious supply from its own industry. In summer it partially quits our dwellings, the heat and dryness of our buildings becoming irksome to it, and the occasional difficulty of obtaining water, in which it delights, prompts it to resort to hedges and banks for a certain period; but it always returns when our barns are filled, and ready for it.

The house fly (musca carnaria)^[50] is another creature that appears domesticated with us; in some seasons a very numerous, and always a very dirty inmate. It associates in our windows at times with a similar insect 152(stomoxys calcitrans), that loves to bask on stones and posts, and which is now biting my legs with the most teasing perseverance. But this phlebotomist has not the same attachment to our habitations, is a more solitary insect, and does not unite in those little social parties, that circle for hours in a sober uniformity of flight below the ceilings of our chambers. Wherever man appears, this house fly is generally to be seen too: and instances are known, when islands have been taken possession of very far removed from the main land, that for a time no flies were visible, yet ere long these little domestic insects have made their appearance; neither natives of the isle, nor can we reasonably suppose them to have taken flight from a distant shore; but probably the offspring of parents that came with the stores in the vessel of the party.

We may have some few other instances of these apparent dependences of animals on man; yet, if we consider the relative situations of both, we shall find them existing, with very few exceptions, independent of him, and that he is more indebted to them for their services, than they are for his protection and support. Man from the earliest periods began to subject the animal world to his dominion, and avail himself of its properties and powers to improve his own condition. As his wants or propensities occurred, he compelled to his aid such animals as he could subdue, or were adapted to his purposes. The chief objects for which we require the aid of animals are for food, clothing, vigilance, and strength. Though the two former are highly essential to our comforts, they are not indispensable; the vegetable world supplies them in abundance to large portions of the inhabitants of the globe, and the companionable qualities, watchfulness, and swiftness of the dog might be dispensed with. It is the strength of animals that makes us sensible of our own weakness. By their power we build our dwellings, effect an intercourse with distant places, obtain much of our food, and the fuel of our hearths: a state of civilization requires, as an indispensable requisite, these things and others, rendering most manifest our obligations to the animal world. Animals 153were created before man; but some of them were apparently endowed with their useful and valuable properties for his comfort and assistance; for he had the dominion of them consigned to him, and was commissioned to subdue them. Having used their products for food and clothing, conjointly with the fruits and seeds of the vegetable world, and their bodies for the carriage of his burdens, after a long age of abstinence he began to feed on their flesh; and they have continued his faithful and assiduous servants, contented with their destiny, and submissive to his desires. He gives them food and shelter in payment of service, attending them with diligence and care: all this may be for his own emolument and pleasure, yet the well-being of the creature, had it continued wild, would not have required it: most of them live longer, and have more enjoyment in a wild and unreclaimed state, than when domesticated with him. By art, and for profit, he has in many instances altered the very nature of the animal, and created ailments, rendering his cares and attentions necessary, which in a state of nature are not required. The lives of many of them, even when subjected to the best of treatment, are consumed with labor and fatigue; and when their unhappy destiny consigns them to the power of poverty and evil passions, what an accumulation of misery and suffering do these wretched creatures undergo! If these arguments have any foundation in truth, it will appear, that animals are not necessarily dependent on man, and generally derive no benefit from their intercourse and association with him; but that, in conformity with original appointment, they aid him to acquire the enjoyments and accomplish the necessities of civilized life. Yet there is one creature, that seems designed by its natural habits to be the servant and dependant of man; and of all that fall under his dominion, not one receives an equal portion of his care, or is more exempt from a life of exhaustion in his service. The dog is fed with him, housed, and caressed; associates with him in his pleasures, is identified with and enjoys them with his master; living with him, he acquires the high bearing and freedom of his lord; feels he is the 154companion and the friend; deports himself as a partaker of the importance and superiority, we might almost say of the sorrows and pleasures of the man; is elated with praise, and abased by rebuke; submissive when corrected, and grateful when caressed: his anxiety and tremor when he has lost his master, and with him himself, is pitiable; when deserted by his lord, he becomes the most forlorn of animals, a never-failing victim to misery, famine, disease, and death. His ardor may excite him at times until overpowered by fatigue; but he is not generally stimulated by pain or menace to attempts beyond his natural powers: view him in all his progress, his life will be found to be an easy, and frequently an enjoyable one; and though not exempt from the afflictions of age, yet his death, if anticipated, becomes a momentary evil. When in a native state, he is a wretched creature, a common beast of the wild, with no innate magnanimity, no acquired virtues; has no elevation, no character to maintain, but passes his days in contention and want, is base in disposition, meager in body, a fugitive, and a coward.

The wheatear (sylvia œnanthe) frequents annually our open commons and stone quarries, and breeds there. I have seen it with nesting materials in its bill, and have had its eggs, though rarely, brought me. This bird visits England early in the spring, and continues with us till nearly the end of September, that is, during the entire breeding season. Yet it is remarkable, notwithstanding its numbers, and the little concealment which its haunts afford, how rarely its nests are found. Its principal place of resort is the South Downs in Sussex; and it appears from the accounts of the most experienced and credible persons of that county, from whom I have my information, that the females are performing their duties of incubation during the month of March; as at that time scarcely any but male birds are visible, of which hundreds are then flying about; while the females with their families appear early in May, and are captured afterwards in great numbers; yet the oldest shepherds have seldom seen their nest! When found, it has been concealed beneath a large stone, or some 155hollow of the rugged chalk hills, containing six pale blue eggs. With us the wheatear stays only to hatch her brood. When this is effected, and the young sufficiently matured, it leaves us entirely, and by the middle of September not a bird is found on their summer stations. They probably retire to the uplands on the seacoasts, as we hear of them as late as November in these places, where it is supposed they find some peculiar insect food, required by them in an adult state, and not found, or only sparingly, in their breeding stations, in which the appropriate food of their young is probably more abundant. Thus united on the coasts, they can take their flight, when the wind or other circumstances favor their passage, all of them departing upon the approach of winter.

Partial as I am to the habits and all the concerns of the country, I regret to say that rural amusements, connected as they commonly are with the creatures about us, are frequently cruel; and that we often most inconsiderately, in our sports, are the cause of misery and suffering to such as nestle around our dwellings, or frequent our fields, which, from some particular cause or motive, become the object of pursuit. I say nothing of the birds known as game, as perhaps we cannot obtain them by less painful means than we are accustomed to inflict, and the pursuit is frequently conducive to recreation and health; but the sportsman’s essaying his skill on the swallow race, that “skim the dimpled pool,” or harmless glide along the flowery mead, when, if successful, he consigns whole nests of infant broods to famine and to death, is pitiable indeed! No injury, no meditated crime, was ever imputed to these birds; they free our dwellings from multitudes of insects; their unsuspicious confidence and familiarity with men merit protection not punishment from him. The sufferings of their broods, when the parents are destroyed, should excite humanity, and demand our forbearance. But the wheatear, in an unfortunate hour, has been called the English ortolan, and is pursued as a delicate morsel through all its inland haunts, when hatching and feeding its young, the only period in which it frequents our 156heaths. I execrate the practice as most cruel: their death evinces no skill in the gunner; their wretched bodies, when obtained, are useless, being embittered by the bruises of the shot, and unskilful operations of the picker and dresser. No, let the parental duties cease, and when the bird retires to its maritime downs, if doomed to suffer, the individual dies alone, and no starving broods perish with it. I supplicate from the youthful sportsman his consideration for these most innocent creatures, the summer wheatear and the swallow.

The eggs produced by the wheatear are uniform in color and similar in shape; but the eggs of birds in general vary much, and are occasionally very puzzling to identify when detached from their nests, as the colorings and markings differ greatly in the same species, and even nest. Those of one color, like this wheatear’s, retain it, with only shades of variation; but when there are blotchings or spots, these are at times very dissimilar, occasioned in great measure probably by the age of the bird; though this cannot account for the difference of those in an individual nest. None vary more than the eggs of the common sparrow. Those of marine birds, especially the guillemot (colymbus troile), are often so unlike each other, that it requires considerable practice to arrange them. The plumage of birds has probably never varied, but remains at this hour what it originally was: but whether these markings on the eggs have any connexion with the shadings on the feathers, it is difficult to determine; as we know that eggs entirely white will produce birds with a variety of plumage. The shell of the egg appears to be designed for the accomplishment of two purposes. One of the offices of this calcareous coating, which consists of carbonate and phosphate of lime, is to unite with the white of the egg, and form, during incubation, the feathers and bone of the future young ones; but as a large portion of this covering remains after the young are produced, its other object is to guard from injury the parts within. As far as I have observed, in eggs of one hue, the coloring matter resides in the calcareous part; but 157where there are markings, these are rather extraneous to it than mixed with it. The elegant blue that distinguishes the eggs of the firetail and the hedge-sparrow, though corroded away, is not destroyed by the muriatic acid. The blue calcareous coating of the thrush’s egg is consumed; but the dark spots, like the markings upon the eggs of the yellow-hammer, house-sparrow, magpie, &c., still preserve their stations on the film, though loosened and rendered mucilaginous by this rough process. Though this calcareous matter is partly taken up during incubation, the markings upon these eggs remain little injured, even to the last, and are almost as strongly defined as when the eggs are first laid. These circumstances seem to imply, that the coloring matter on the shells of eggs does not contribute to the various hues of the plumage; but, it is reasonable to conclude, are designed to answer some particular object, not obvious to us: for though the marks are so variable, yet the shadings and spottings of one species never wander so as to become exactly figured like those of another family, but preserve, year after year, a certain characteristic figuring. Few animal substances, in a recent state, contain more hepatic gas than an eggshell, as is manifest from the very offensive smell that proceeds from it when burned. A little of this is caused by the gluten that cements the calcareous matter, but the overpowering fetor comes from the inner membrane that lines the shell.

The superstitions and fancies of persons, though we may often contemn them, are yet at times deserving of notice, being occasionally to be traced to some former received belief or national custom, and perhaps when charactered by emblems or ceremonies may be considered as certainly originating from the tenets of some sect or popular observance; the partiality manifested by the English in general for flowers and horticultural pursuits is recently, from a sentence in Pliny (Nat. Hist. XIV. chap. 4), supposed to have been acquired from their Roman conquerors; and probably many other attachments and practices, though obscured and perverted by time, have been retained from the example 158of some of the various nations who have ruled in our island. Bird-nesting boys, I suppose, are yet to be met with in many a rural village, being a habit from immemorial antiquity, pursued with eagerness in contention with their fellows for numbers and rarity, but that accomplished, like so many of our pursuits in after life, the pleasure ceases when rivalry is no more: but regarding these birds’ eggs we have a very foolish superstition here; the boys may take them unrestrained, but their mothers so dislike their being kept in the house, that they usually break them; their presence may be tolerated for a few days, but by the ensuing Sunday are frequently destroyed, under the idea that they bring bad luck, or prevent the coming of good fortune, as if in some way offensive to the domestic deity of the hearth: having occasionally inquired for these plunders of our small birds at the cottages, to supply some deficiencies in a collection, I have found so general a prepossession against retaining them, as in most cases to fail of success.

The kite (falco milvus) is one of our rarest birds. We see it occasionally, in its progress to other parts, sailing along sedately on its way; but it never visits us. Our copses present it with no enticing harborage, and our culture scares it. In former years I was intimately acquainted with this bird; but its numbers seem greatly on the decline, having been destroyed, or driven away to lonely places, or to the most extensive woodlands. In the breeding season it will at times approach near the outskirts of villages, seeking materials for its nest; but in general it avoids the haunts of man. It is the finest native bird that we possess, and all its deportment partakes of a dignity peculiar to itself, well becoming a denizen of the forest or the park; for though we see it sometimes in company with the buzzard, it is never to be mistaken for this clumsy bird, which will escape from the limb of some tree, with a confused and hurried flight, indicative of fear; while the kite moves steadily from the summit of the loftiest oak, the scathed crest of the highest poplar, or the most elevated ash—circles round and round, sedate and calm, and then leaves us. 159I can confusedly remember a very extraordinary capture of these birds, when I was a boy. Roosting one winter evening on some very lofty elms, a fog came on during the night, which froze early in the morning, and fastened the feet of the poor kites so firmly to the boughs, that some adventurous youths brought down, I think, fifteen of them so secured! Singular as the capture was, the assemblage of so large a number was no less so, it being in general a solitary bird, or associating only in pairs.

The blackcap (motacilla atracapilla) is our constant visitor, but very uncertain in its numbers, as it fully participates in all the casualties of our migratory tribes; not by any great diminution probably in its winter residence, but by loss in its transits of autumn or spring. We have years when every little copse resounds with harmony; at other periods, only a few solitary songsters are to be heard; and the blackcap is the principal performer in the band of our domestic vocalists. In the scale of music it is the third for mellowness, and the third perhaps too for execution and compass. As this melody, however, continues only during the period of incubation, we hear it but for a short time; for this bird wastes no time in amusements, appearing to be in great haste to accomplish the object of its visit, and to depart. Thus, immediately upon its arrival, we observe it surveying and inspecting places fitting for nidification, and commencing a nest; but so careful and suspicious is it, that several are often abandoned before finished, from some apprehension or caprice: any intrusion is jealously noticed; and during the whole period of sitting and rearing its young, it is timid and restless. I have observed that both birds will occasionally perform the office of incubation.

It seems to live entirely by choice on fruits; and as soon as the brood can remove, it visits our gardens, feeding with delight and almost insatiable appetite on the currant and the raspberry; and so much is it engaged when at this banquet, that it suffers itself to be looked at, and forgets for the moment its usual timidity: but its natural shyness never leaves it entirely; and 160though it remains in our gardens or orchards as long as any of its favorite fruits continue, it avoids observation as much as possible, and hides itself in the foliage from all familiarity or confidence. This exceeding dislike of man is very extraordinary. Larger or more important birds might have an instinctive fear of violence; but this creature is too small and insignificant to have ever experienced or to apprehend injuries from him. It may arise from a long residence in wilds and solitary places, seldom visited by human beings, during those eight or nine months when it is absent from us, so that man becomes an unknown creature, and injury is suspected. Our native small birds, that reside all the year with us, and see us often, though they may retire at our near approach, do not exhibit such shyness and avoidance as several of our migrating birds. The gray flycatcher, and the swallow tribe, which seek their food, we conclude, all the year near the dwellings of man, where most abundantly found, manifest familiarity with us rather than dislike, are accustomed to the sight of human beings, and do not fear them; but whatever may be the cause that influences the precipitate retreat of certain birds, we note the original mandate, and see that the “fear of us, and the dread of us,” are still in operation with many of these little “fowls of the air,” that would never receive harm from our hands. The blackcap finishes its feast here with the jargonel pear, when it can meet with it, then leaves us for other fruits and milder climes.

“And the fear of you, and the dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth.” This vesture of universal dread, which was to envelop man, though appointed from the beginning of time, has never been removed, but most signally and remarkably attaches to him still. It was ordained to be so; and so it is. In some few instances only does this awe of man subside: in extreme cases of want, for individual preservation, or when protection is required. In such cases, the fear or sensibility of pain, love of life, or a paramount duty, becomes the stronger principle, annihilating 161the weaker; and the dread of man’s supremacy is no more. The weakest, the very insect, then assails him, and at times becomes the victor. Does any conceivable or visible cause exist from which this awe can proceed? Does “his sublime countenance, contemplative of the heavens,” the image that he bears, or his deportment, afford any ascendent influence productive of this impression? In bodily power he is more weak and obnoxious to injury than many that shrink from a contest with him; his natural arms and means of protection are inferior often to those of the beings which he subdues; yet from an undefinable cause he is omnipotent over all. Terror in man most commonly arises from a knowledge of power, apprehension of ills from accident, or fear of the evil inclinations of another. What the fowls of the air, or the beasts of the field perceive, or are impressed with, we know not; but none of these causes can exist in a brute mind without intelligence or experience. These are the reflections of a thoughtful hour. The cause, “though a man labor to seek out, yet shall he not find it; and though a man think to know it, yet shall he not be able.” But the contemplation is not wholly an unworthy occupation of time. All ages, all people, must have perceived the admitted power and universal dread occasioned by the presence of man, but no reason, no motive, could have been assigned for it; but in these days, by revelation, we know the cause, have impressed upon our minds the immutable truth of that Being which ordained, and of that volume which has proclaimed his mandate to us. But man has the power assigned him of calling to his aid a visible object of dread, confided to him from the earliest periods; and he alone of all created beings has the agency of this terror. All the inferior orders have a fear of it, and flee from it, even when its effects could never have been known or experienced, but which appears to be innate and inseparable from all. Man alone has the knowledge, the means of calling heat into action; and though warmth is the delight, and essential to the being of most, yet, rouse it into active operation producing fire, and terror and flight succeed enjoyment 162and rest: it deters the approach of the most ferocious, and man and his charge abide unharmed when surrounded by the terror he has raised. In addition to the many characters given as a definition of man, we might call him a fire-producing creature.

The end of our summer months, and the autumnal season, afford us frequently the best periods for observing some of our occasional visiting birds. Upon their first arrival, and for a time afterwards, their notes announce their presence; but they are not always to be seen with satisfaction, and scattered in retired places, or occupied in the business of incubation, when they are particularly wary and suspicious, they are but casually noticed: but in the times above stated, our gardens, shrubberies, and orchards, become their resort, seeking for the fruits usually produced in those places. And, first, the pettychaps, with all her matured brood, is certain to be found, feeding voraciously upon our cultivated berries, or mining a hole in the fig or jargonel pear; and so intent are they upon this occupation, that they will permit a reasonable examination of their form and actions, but at other periods it is difficult to approach them. The blackcap discontentedly flits about our inclosures and thickets all the summer through, building her nest or tending her young; the fine clear harmony of the male bird resounding in the morning from the brake, yet, timid and alarmed, he ceases and hides himself if we approach: but he now introduces all his progeny to our banquet; cautious still, we can yet observe his actions, and easily distinguish the black or brown heads of the sexes, as they are occupied beneath the foliage of an Antwerp raspberry. The white throats, now, too, leave their hedges, and all their insect food, which for months had been their only supply, and in the thick covert of the gooseberry extract with great dexterity the pulp of the fruit, or strip the currant of its berry. The elegant, slender form of the female, her snowy throat and silvery stomach, render her very conspicuous as she scuttles away to hide herself in the bush: her plain, brown-backed mate seems rather less timid, but yet carefully avoids all symptoms of familiarity. Other doubtful little 163birds likewise appear, and are gone, several of which, however, are probably the young of ascertained species. And here the little willow wren is often to be seen: he comes in company with his travelling friends, not as a partaker of their plunder, appearing never to abandon his appetite for insect food: the species may change with the season, but still it is animal: he glides about our rows of peas, peeps under the leaves of fruit trees for aphides and moths, continuing this harmless pursuit until the cold mornings of autumn drive him to milder regions. All these fruit-eating birds seem to have a very discriminating taste, and a decided preference for the richest sorts—the sweetest variety of the gooseberry or the currant always being selected; and when they are consumed, less saccharine dainties are submitted to: but the hedge blackberry of the season our little foreign connoisseurs disdain to feed on, leaving it for the humbler appetited natives—they are away to sunnier regions and more grateful food.

June 14.—I was much pleased this day by detecting the stratagems of a common wren to conceal its nest from observation. It had formed a hollow space in the thatch, on the inside of my cow-shed, in which it had placed its nest by the side of a rafter, and finished it with its usual neatness; but lest the orifice of its cell should engage attention, it had negligently hung a ragged piece of moss on the straw-work, concealing the entrance, and apparently proceeding from the rafter; and so perfect was the deception, that I should not have noticed it, though tolerably observant of such things, had not the bird betrayed her secret, and darted out. Now from what operative cause did this stratagem proceed? Habit it was not;—it seemed like an after-thought;—danger was perceived, and the contrivance which a contemplative being would have provided, was resorted to. The limits of instinct we cannot define:^[51] 164it appeared the reflection of reason. This procedure may be judged, perhaps, a trifling event to notice; but the ways and motives of creatures are so little understood, that any evidence which may assist our research should not be rejected. Call their actions as we may, they have the effect of reason; and loving all the manners and operations of these directed beings, I have noted this, simple as it may be.

At one period of my life, being an early waker and riser, my attention was frequently drawn to “songs of earliest birds;” and I always observed that these creatures appeared abroad at very different periods as the light advanced. The rook is perhaps the first to salute the opening morn; but this bird seems rather to rest than to sleep. Always vigilant, the least alarm after retirement rouses instantly the whole assemblage, not successively, but collectively. It is appointed to be a ready mover. Its principal food is worms, which feed and crawl upon the humid surface of the ground in the dusk, and retire before the light of day; and, roosting higher than other birds, the first rays of the sun, as they peep from the horizon, become visible to it. The restless, inquisitive robin^[52] now is seen too. This is the last bird that retires in the evening, being frequently flitting about when the owl and bat are visible, and awakes so soon in the morning, that little rest seems required by it. Its fine large eyes are fitted to receive all, even the weakest rays of light that appear. The worm is its food too, and few that move upon the surface escape its notice. The cheerful melody of the wren is the next we hear, as it bustles from its ivied roost; and we note its gratulation to the young-eyed day, when twilight almost hides the little minstrel from our sight. The sparrow roosts in holes, and under the eaves of the rick or shed, where the light does not so soon enter, and 165hence is rather a tardy mover; but it is always ready for food, and seems to listen to what is going forward. We see it now peeping from its penthouse, inquisitively surveying the land; and, should provision be obtainable, it immediately descends upon it without any scruple, and makes itself a welcome guest with all. It retires early to rest. The blackbird quits its leafy roost in the ivied ash; its “chink, chink” is heard in the hedge and, mounting on some neighboring oak, with mellow sober voice it gratulates the coming day. “The plainsong cuckoo gray” from some tall tree now tells its tale. The lark is in the air, the “marten twitters from her earth-built shed,” all the choristers are tuning in the grove; and amid such tokens of awakening pleasure it becomes difficult to note priority of voice. These are the matin voices of the summer season: in winter a cheerless chirp, or a hungry twit, is all we hear; the families of voice are away, or silent; we have little to note, and perhaps as little inclination to observe.

During no portion of the day can the general operations of nature be more satisfactorily observed than in the early morning. Rosy June—the very thoughts of an early summer’s morning in the country, like enchantment, gives action to the current of our blood, and seems to breathe through our veins a stream of health and enjoyment! All things appear fresh and unsoiled; the little birds, animated and gratulous, are frisking about the sprays; others, proceeding to their morning’s meal, or occupied in the callings of their nature, give utterance by every variety of voice to the pleasures that they feel: the world has not yet called us, and with faculties unworn, we unite with them, partake of this general hilarity and joy, feel disposed to be happy, and enjoy the blessings around us: the very air itself, as yet uninhaled by any, circulates about us replete with vitality, conveying more than its usual portion of sustenance and health, “and man goeth forth unto his labor.” Night-feeding creatures, feeling the freshness of light, and the coming day, are all upon the move retiring from danger and observation; and we can note them now unhidden in their lairs, unconcealed 166beneath the foliage in the hedge: the very vegetation, bathed in dew and moisture, full fed, partakes of this early morning joy and health, and every creeping thing is refreshed and satisfied. As day advances, it changes all; and of these happy beings of the early hour, part are away, and we must seek them; others are oppressed, silent, listless; the vegetable, no longer lucid with dew, and despoiled of all the little gems that glittered from every serrature of its leaf, seems pensive at the loss. When blessed with health, having peace, innocence, and content, as inmates of the mind, perhaps the most enjoyable hours of life may be found in an early summer’s morning.

Oct. 9.—A brilliant morning! warm, without oppression; exhilarating, without chilling. Imagination cannot surely conceive, or caprice wish for an atmospheric temperature more delightful than what this day affords; having mingled with it just that portion of vital air which brisks up animality, without consuming the sustenance of life; satisfying the body with health, and filling the heart with gratitude. Fine threads of gossamer float lazily along the air, marking by this peculiar feature the autumn of our year. On our commons, and about our thistly hedge-rows, flocks of goldfinches^[53] (fringilla carduelis), the united produce of the summer months, are sporting and glistening in the sunny beam, scattering all over the turf the down of the thistle, as they pick out the seed for their food. But this beautiful native has only a few short weeks in which it will have liberty to enjoy society and life. Our bird-catchers will soon entrap it; and of those that escape his toils, few will survive to the spring, should our winter prove a severe one. Long as I have noticed this bird, it has appeared to me that it never makes any plants generally its food, except those of the syngenesia class, and on these it diets nearly the whole year. In the spring season it picks out the seeds from the fir cones. During the winter months it very frequently visits our gardens, feeding on the seeds of the groundsel (senecio vulgaris), which chiefly abounds in cultivated places, and vegetates there throughout the coldest seasons. This, 167however, is an humble plant; and when covered by the snow, the poor birds are half famished for want. We then see them striving to satisfy their hunger by picking some solitary green head of the plant remaining above the frozen snow, and so tame, that they will suffer a very near approach before they take flight. As the frost continues, our little garden visitors diminish daily, and by spring only a few pairs remain of all the flocks of autumn. Yet it is very remarkable, notwithstanding this natural predilection, how readily this bird conforms to a perfect change in its diet, and in all the habits of its life. Most of our little songsters, when captured as old birds, become in confinement sullen and dispirited; want of exercise, and of particular kinds of food, and their changes, alter the quality of the fluids: they become fattened, and indisposed to action by repletion; fits and ailments ensue, and they mope and die. But I have known our goldfinch, immediately after its capture, commence feeding on its canary or hemp-seed, food it could never have tasted before, nibble his sugar in the wires like an enjoyment it had been accustomed to, frisk round its cage, and dress its plumage, without manifesting the least apparent regret for the loss of companions or of liberty. Harmless to the labors or the prospects of us lords of the creation, as so many of our small birds are, we have none less chargeable with the commission of injury than the goldfinch; yet its blameless, innocent life does not exempt it from harm. Its beauty, its melody, and its early reconciliation to confinement, rendering it a desirable companion, it is captured to cheer us with its manners and its voice, in airs and regions very different from its native thistly downs, and apple-blossom bowers.

The tree-creeper (certhia familiaris) is as little observed as any common bird we possess. A retired inhabitant of woods and groves, and not in any manner conspicuous for voice or plumage, it passes its days with us, creating scarcely any notice or attention. Its small size, and the manner in which it procures its food, both tend to secrete him from sight. It feeds entirely on small insects, which it seeks between the crevices in 168the bark of trees, or under the mosses and lichens that invest their limbs. In these pursuits its actions are more like those of a mouse than of a bird, darting like a great moth from tree to tree, uttering a faint trilling sound as it fixes on their boles, running round them in a spiral direction, when with repeated wriggles having gained the summit, it darts to another, and commences again; and so intent is it on the object of pursuit, and unsuspicious of harm, that I have seen it swept from the tree with a stick. Mr. Pennant thinks that it retires into milder regions upon the advance of winter; but many certainly remain with us. In the early part of the spring, when food is comparatively scarce in the woods, it will frequent the mossy trees in our orchards and gardens; but after a very short examination of them, is away to its usual retirements, seeking no familiarity with us, notwithstanding the social epithet it has obtained. This little creature is observed in no great numbers; yet its actions and manners seem to be such as would tend to its increase. The female lays eight or nine eggs; it roosts securely in the holes of large trees; and from its manner of feeding, and the places it inhabits, it can scarcely be destroyed by birds of prey; yet, from some counteracting cause, our little certhia, instead of increasing, apparently becomes a scarcer bird. The limits that are appointed to the increase of all the inferior orders of creation are very worthy of remark. There may be periods when a great augmentation of individual species takes place; but this circumstance is local, or temporary, and future numbers do not result from it. Some motive for the increase, no doubt, existed; but, the object being accomplished, it ceases, and apparent events, or imperceptible causes, reduce the profusion of the race, so that certain numbers only continue. This little tree-creeper, though always active, seems to possess most animation and restlessness in the autumnal months.

The yellow wagtail (motacilla flava) is so regularly seen with us in his season, as to be quite a common bird, breeding in our fields; yet generally observed as he is, he always invites our attention, by his graceful 169form and brilliant plumage, either actively running in our path, or sporting in the pastures with that animation and ease so remarkable in all this family, that we may justly distinguish them as the gentles of our fields. With manners and habits similar to the common gray ones, yet there seems to be but little intimate association between the species; and though they are occasionally intermixed, we most commonly observe them feeding by themselves and frolicking with their own particular race. In autumn, when their broods are united with them, they assemble in large parties towards the evening preparatory to their nightly roost, selecting low spreading bushes hanging over the pool, or as near the water as they can, and thus become secured from capture by nocturnal vermin. Being in full beauty at this time, the fine yellow breasts of the male birds render them very conspicuous as they glance about the dry bents of the pasture. Autumn advancing, we lose these flights; but now and then a single bird will appear in one of those occasional bright sunny days that even winter will produce, looking like some deserted straggler who has lost its passage, or from some other cause remaining with us, chasing the gnat on the margin of the sheltered pool, and then, when the sunny ray passes away, he departs with it, is hidden we know not where, supported by means we are not acquainted with, till another partial gleam allures him from retirement. In April, the flights once more appear with all the fine feather and freshness of autumnal birds, running about the furrows in arable fields, and catching the insects disturbed by the plow in its progress. Soon building their nest, and attending their families, they become bleached by the sun and rain of the season, and remain shabby for weeks. Though they may follow the course of the swallow and other migrating birds, yet their peculiar manner of flight seems to preclude long-continued exertion; not sailing and poising in air like the hirundines and others, but proceeding by jerks, by risings and sinkings, which at every pause require muscular action to set them in progress anew, which for any length of time could hardly be continued. It is 170probable that their migrations are not very remote. The mode of life assigned to these creatures requires great activity of body; for living solely upon insects and winged animals, they are constantly capturing or pursuing; and their length of tail, which is perpetually in motion, seems to aid and balance the operations of the body. In the evening, when the winged creatures are at rest, or, from the state of the atmosphere, in repose, the wagtail resorts to the pastures, feeding under the very bodies and noses of the cattle, who now become the starters of his game, which, moving from the animal, are captured by the bird. Being drowsy, and settling almost as soon as disturbed, their prey would escape, was the wagtail less nimble in his actions—for he does not appear to perceive the insect, except when it moves. How differently formed is this bird and the gray flycatcher! Though both are solely insectivorous, yet they secure their prey by very distinct means, the latter seldom capturing on the ground or using his legs in pursuit; the other uses actively his slender legs and extended wings to aid him. The swallow race, again, feed unlike them both, and haunting the pool, the stream, the mead, or the higher regions of the air, which his fraternity possess as a peculiar domain, satisfy their wants in peace, without collision or contention for the object.

Admirably adapted to the requirements of each creature as their dispositions and institutions are known to be, yet their peculiar modes of dieting, or inclination for particular food, and formation of the organs that digest it, should not be utterly unheeded, because by these appointments of Omniscience, abundance is produced for every race of created things in all places, without variance or unfitting exertions to procure it. Could we unite into one district a human being from every square mile upon the surface of the globe, unshackled by bigotry or the tenets of any faith, they probably, without reluctance, having the means, might feed upon and be nourished by one natural diet—we will say the flesh of the ox, with potatoes or rice—but this is by no means the case with the inferior animals. 171Most of them, having different conformations and inclinations, are supported by variety of diet; by which means every station and place is made an abode, and maintains its inhabitants, for the “Creator hath opened his hand, and filled all things living with plenteousness.”

As a brief note, not a disquisition, upon the subject, is designed, we will pass over the habits and dispositions of beasts and insects, strongly charactered as they are, and only instance a few of our land birds, as affording the most familiar instances; and we shall find that it is not the genera only, but the individuals which compose them in many instances, that are supported by different aliment. And first, those birds which we denominate as Rapacious, such as falcons, hawks, owls, live upon animal food which they capture, kill, and devour; abstaining, unless stimulated by necessity, from creatures they may find dead. Then come the pies: of these, the raven and crow likewise eat animal food, but it is generally such as has been killed by violence or ceased to exist, only in cases of want^[54] killing for themselves. The rook, the daw, the magpie, consume worms, grubs, and are not addicted, except from hunger, to eating other animal matters. The two first feed at times in society; the latter associates with neither, but feeds in places remote from such as are frequented by them. The jay too eats grubs and such things, but seeks them out under hedges, in coverts and places which others of his kind abandon to him. The cuckoo seems principally to live upon the eggs of birds with a few insects and larvæ occasionally; the wryneck upon emmets, from heaps under hedges near concealment—the woodpeckers upon insects found upon trees; and when they seek for the emmet, they prefer the antheaps 172of commons and open places;—the halcyon upon small fishes:—thus all these creatures, even when they require similar aliment, diet at their separate boards. Of the Gallinaceous birds, the wood-grouse is supported by the young shoots of the pine in his forests; but the black and red grouse live upon berries found on the moor, the seeds and tops of the heath; the partridge upon seeds in the field, blades of grass or of corn; the pheasant upon mast, acorns, berries from the hedge or the brake. The bustard is content to live upon worms alone, found in early morning upon downs and wide extended plains, where none dispute his right or compete with him, but one species of plover. The doves make their principal meals in open fields, upon green herbage and seeds. The stare again feeds upon worms and insects, but in places remote from the bustard, nor does he contend with the rook, or the daw, but takes his meat and is away.

The Passerine birds, indeed, are remarkably dissimilar in their manner of feeding. The missel-thrush will have berries from the mistletoe, or seeks for insects and slugs in wild and open places, the heath or the down. The song-thrush makes his meal from the snail on the bank, or worm from the paddock; but the blackbird, though associating with him, leaves the snails, contenting himself with worms from the hedge-side, or berries from the brier or the bush. The fieldfare consumes worms in the mead or haws from the hedge. The crossbill will have seeds from the apple, or cone of the fir—the green-finch, seeds from the uplands, or door of barn, or rick-yard. The bunting is peculiarly gifted with a bony knob in the roof of his bill, upon which he breaks down the hard seeds he is destined to feed upon. The bull-finch selects buds from trees and bushes. The goldfinch is nurtured by thistle seeds, or those of other syngenesious plants. Sparrows feed promiscuously. Linnets shell out seeds from the cherlock, or the rape, or the furze on the common. One lark will feed in the corn-fields, another in the mead, another in the woodlands—one titmouse upon insects frequenting the alder and willow; some upon those which are hidden 173under mosses, and lichens on large trees; a third upon coleopterous creatures, secreted in the hedge-row and the coppice. The gray wagtail finds food with us all the year; but the yellow one must seek it in other regions. The nightingale diets upon a peculiar grub, and when that is not found in the state he prefers, he departs. The domestic swallow feeds round our houses, or in the meadow; but the bank swallow never comes near us, chases his food beneath the crag, and along the stream. The swift prefers the higher ranges of the air, dieting upon the flies that mount into those regions. The goat-sucker does not notice the creatures of the day, capturing the moths and dorrs of the night. The wheatear feeds only upon such insects as he finds upon fallow lands, the down or the heath; and thus almost every individual might be characterized by some propensity of appetite, by some mode or place of feeding; and hence individuals are found as tenants of the homestead, the wild, the stream, the air, rock, down, and grove—in every place finding plenty, and fulfilling their destination without rivalry or contention: nor perhaps is there any race of creatures that associates more innocently, or passes their lives more free from bickering and strife, than these our land birds do, persevering, from period to period, with undeviating habits and propensities, manifesting an original appointment and fixed design of Providence, whose bounteous table, wherever we look around, is spread for all, and good things meted out to each by justice, weight, and measure.

I am neither inclined to seek after, nor desirous of detailing, the little annoyances that these wildings of nature, in their hard struggles for existence, may occasionally produce; being fully persuaded that the petty injuries we sometimes sustain from birds are at others fully compensated by their services. We too often, perhaps, notice the former, while the latter are remote, or not obtrusive. I was this day (Jan. 25) led to reflect upon the extensive injury that might be produced by the agency of a very insignificant instrument, in observing the operations of the common bunting (emberiza miliaris); a bird that seems to live principally, if not 174entirely, upon seeds, and has its mandibles constructed in a very peculiar manner, to aid this established appointment of its life. In the winter season it will frequent the stacks in the farm-yard, in company with others, to feed upon any corn that may be found scattered about; but, little inclined to any association with man, it prefers those situations which are most lonely and distant from the village. It could hardly be supposed that this bird, not larger than a lark, is capable of doing serious injury; yet I this morning witnessed a rick of barley, standing in a detached field, entirely stripped of its thatching, which this bunting effected by seizing the end of the straw, and deliberately drawing it out, to search for any grain the ear might yet contain; the base of the rick being entirely surrounded by the straw, one end resting on the ground, the other against the mow, as it slid down from the summit, and regularly placed as if by the hand; and so completely was the thatching pulled off, that the immediate removal of the corn became necessary. The sparrow and other birds burrow into the stack, and pilfer the corn; but the deliberate operation of unroofing the edifice appears to be the habit of this bunting alone.

Old simplicities, tokens of winds and weather, and the plain observances of rural life, are everywhere waning fast to decay. Some of them may have been fond conceits; but they accorded with the ordinary manners of the common people, and marked times, seasons, and things, with sufficient truth for those who had faith in them. Little as we retain of these obsolete fancies, we have not quite abandoned them all; and there are yet found among our peasants, a few who mark the blooming of the large white lily (lilium candidum), and think that the number of its blossoms on a stem will indicate the price of wheat by the bushel for the ensuing year, each blossom equivalent to a shilling. We expect a sunny day, too, when the pimpernel (anagallis arvensis) fully expands its blossoms; a dubious, or a moist one, when they are closed. In this belief, however, we have the sanction of some antiquity to support us; Sir F. Bacon records it; Gerarde notes it 175as a common opinion entertained by country people above two centuries ago; and I must not withhold my own faith in its veracity, but say that I believe this pretty little flower to afford more certain indication of dryness or moisture in the air, than any of our hygrometers do. But if these be fallible criterions, we will notice another, that seldom deceives us. The approach of a sleety snow-storm, following a deceitful gleam in spring, is always announced to us by the loud untuneful voice of the missel-thrush (turdus viscivorus), as it takes its stand on some tall tree, like an enchanter calling up the gale. It seems to have no song, no voice, but this harsh predictive note; and it in great measure ceases with the storms of spring. We hear it occasionally in autumn, but its voice is not then the prognostic of any change of weather. The missel-thrush is a wild and wary bird, keeping generally in open fields and commons, heaths, and unfrequented places, feeding upon worms and insects. In severe weather it approaches our plantations and shrubberies, to feed on the berry of the mistletoe, the ivy, or the scarlet fruit of the holly or the yew; and should the redwing or the fieldfare presume to partake of these with it, we are sure to hear its voice in clattering and contention with the intruders, until it drives them from the place, though it watches and attends, notwithstanding, to its own safety. In April it begins to prepare its nest. This is large and so openly placed, as would, if built in the copse, infallibly expose it to the plunder of the magpie and the crow, which at this season prey upon the eggs of every nest they can find. To avoid this evil, it resorts to our gardens and our orchards, seeking protection from man, near whose haunts those rapacious plunderers are careful of approaching; yet they will at times attempt to seize upon its eggs even there, when the thrush attacks them and drives them away with a hawklike fury; and the noisy warfare of the contending parties occasionally draws our attention to them. The call of the young birds to their parents for food is unusually disagreeable, and reminds us of the croak of a frog. The brood being reared, it becomes again a shy and wild creature, abandons 176our homesteads, and returns to its solitudes and heaths.

The extraordinary change of character which many creatures exhibit, from timidity to boldness and rage, from stupidity to art and stratagem, for the preservation of a helpless offspring, seems to be an established ordination of Providence, actuating in various degrees most of the races of animated beings; and we have few examples of this influencing principle more obvious than this of the missel bird, in which a creature addicted to solitude and shyness will abandon its haunts, and associate with those it fears, to preserve its offspring from an enemy more merciless and predaceous still. The love of offspring, one of the strongest impressions given to created beings, and inseparable from their nature, is ordained by the Almighty as the means of preservation under helplessness and want. Dependent, totally dependent as is the creature, for every thing that can contribute to existence and support, upon the great Creator of all things, so are new-born feebleness and blindness dependent upon the parent that produced them; and to the latter is given intensity of love, to overbalance the privations and sufferings required from it. This love, that changes the nature of the timid and gentle to boldness and fury, exposes the parent to injury and death, from which its wiles and cautions do not always secure it; and in man the avarice of possession will at times subdue his merciful and better feelings. Beautifully imbued with celestial justice and humanity as all the ordinations which the Israelites received in the wilderness were, there is nothing more impressive, nothing more accordant with the divinity of our nature, than the particular injunctions which were given in respect to showing mercy to the maternal creature cherishing its young, when by reason of its parental regard it might be placed in danger. The eggs, the offspring, were allowed to be taken; but “thou shalt in anywise let the dam go;” “thou shalt not, in one day, kill both an ewe and her young.” The ardent affection, the tenderness, with which I have filled the parent, is in no way to lead to its injury or destruction: and 177this is enforced, not by command only, not by the threat of punishment and privation, but by the assurance of temporal reward, by promise of the greatest blessings that can be found on earth, length of days and prosperity.

The jack snipe (scolopax gallinula) is with us here, as I have always known it, a transitory visitor in the winter only—a solitary, unsocial bird—an anchorite from choice. With the exception of our birds of prey, the manner of whose existing requires it, and a few others, all the feathered tribe seem to have a general tendency towards association, either in flocks, family parties, or pairs; but the individuals of this species pass a large portion of their lives retired and alone, two of them being rarely, or perhaps never, found in company, except in the breeding season. They are supposed to pair and raise their young in the deep marshy tracts or reedy districts of the fen counties, which afford concealment from every prying eye, and safety from all common injuries. Driven by the frosts of winter from these watery tracts, their summer’s covert, they separate, and seek for food in more favored situations, preferring a little, lonely, open spring, trickling from the side of a hill, tangled with grass and foliage, or some shallow, rushy streamlet in a retired valley. Having fixed on such a place, they seldom abandon it long, or quit it for another; and though roused from it, and fired at repeatedly through the day, neither the noise nor any sense of danger seems to alarm them; and, if we should seek for the little judcock on an ensuing morning, we find it at its spring again. The indifference with which it endures this daily persecution is amazing. It will afford amusement or vexation to the young sportsman throughout the whole Christmas vacation; and, from the smallness of its body, will finally often escape from all its diurnal dangers. The rail, and several other birds, confide for safety more in their legs than their wings, when disturbed; but this snipe makes little use of its feet, and takes to its wings with such reluctance, from an apparent indolence of disposition, that, could it be seen in the rushes, or tufts 178of herbage, where it hides, it might be captured by the hand. It leaves us early in the spring. Fond of concealment as this little bird usually is, yet there are times when it is infinitely less so than at others; and, I think, upon the relenting of a frost, or when there is a tendency to a thaw, it shows unusual alacrity, springs from its rushy drain almost as readily as the common snipe, and occasions, for the moment, a doubt of the species. The mandible of this species is of a weak and spongy nature.

The causes that influence this snipe to lead so solitary a life are particularly obscure, as well as those which stimulate some others to congregate, as we comprehend no individual benefit to arise from such habits. Wild fowl, the rook, and some other birds, derive security, perhaps, from feeding in society, as a sentinel appears to be placed by them at such times to give notice of danger; but our congregating small birds take no such precaution: security or mutual protection does not seem to be obtained by it, as the largeness of the flocks invites danger, and warmth in the winter season it does not afford. For the purposes of migration, such associations are in many respects serviceable and consistent; but in our resident species, considered in its various results, it becomes rather a subject of conjecture, than of explanation. Timid creatures associate commonly upon the apprehension of danger, and, without yielding any mutual support, become only the more obnoxious to evil; and this snipe, though its habits are the very reverse of connexion with its species, yet affords no clue to direct us to the causes of its unusual habits. These associations of some, and retirement of others, are not the capricious actions of an hour in a few individuals, but so regularly and annually observed in the several species, that they are manifestly appointed provisions of nature, though the object is unknown. This half-snipe, as our sportsmen call it, has rather generally been considered by our young shooters as the male of the larger species, or common snipe (scolopax gallinago); yet it is difficult to assign any reason for the prevalence of such an idea, with those who have had many opportunities 179of observing the dissimilarity in the mode of life, the manners, and plumage of the birds. I know not any bird that lays so large an egg, in proportion to its size, as the snipe.

A few pairs of the peewit (tringa vanellus) visit annually some of our larger plowed fields to breed; but they are so frequently disturbed by those necessary processes of husbandry, hoeing and weeding, that they seldom succeed in the object of their visit. On our adjoining heath they escape better, and bring off many of their young: but the larger portion of them keep their station on the banks and dikes of the great drains and sewers in the marsh lands; and the traveller, who happens, in the spring of the year, to pass along any of the roads bordering upon these haunts, where many pairs are settled, will long remember the wearying and incessant clamor of these birds, which, rising as he approaches, wheel about him in an awkward, tumbling flight, accompanied by the unremitting, querulous cry of “peewit, peewit,” continued by the perseverance of successive pairs, as long as he remains near their habitation; which generally being a flat, aguish, uninteresting country, where little is heard but the whispering of the wind in the reeds and sedges, the teasing monotony of this bird gives a very peculiarly dreary and melancholy character to parts of our lowland roads. In some counties these cold, wet districts go by the name of “peewit or pewety lands.” At this period of the year, the bird is bold and fearless, and menaces the intruder with all its vociferous powers, when he approaches its haunts; but the broods being fledged, the families unite, form large flocks, and retire to open meadows, uninclosed commons and downs, feeding on slugs and worms, and become wild and vigilant creatures. It is well known that the glareous liquor or white of the egg of this bird, upon being boiled, becomes gelatinous and translucent, not a thick opake substance like that of the hen; a circumstance that is likewise observable in the eggs of the rook, and of many of our small birds. The latter are not sufferers by it; but the eggs of the poor rook, though bearing little resemblance to those of this 180plover, are in some places not uncommonly taken and sold conjointly with them in the London market; and probably the habitual eater of them only can distinguish a sensible difference.

Prognostications and signs, a great amusement, and the ground-work of belief to our forefathers, have, in general, pretty much declined with us; the repeated falsity of most of them having destroyed their reputation. We know so little, if any thing, of the actuating causes of seasons and their change, or the combinations effecting results, that no safe conclusion can be formed of any present events influencing the future. Whatever our almanacs may do, few persons of credit will venture now to predict, from what we call natural causes, a hot summer, or a severe winter; yet that very ancient idea, amongst country people, that “years of store of haws and heps do commonly portend cold winters,” still lingers with us. However warmly we assent to the fundamental truth, the merciful consideration of Providence, in providing food for the necessities of the little fowls of the air, which, perhaps, piously gave rise to the observation, almost every year proves, that any conclusions drawn from these “stores of haws and heps” are perfectly fallacious. The birds that feed chiefly upon the fruit of the white thorn, and the wild rose, are the fieldfare (turdus pilaris), and the redwing (turdus iliacus); and that they do so, every sportsman has had the most manifest conviction: yet it has been said recently, that these creatures do not eat these fruits; and said too by an eminent and amiable man, with whom I have frequently had the honor of conversing, and always with profit.^[55] Were he living, his love of science would encourage my observations, though not in unison with his opinion: my breath shall not agitate his ashes, nor will his spirit, I am certain, frown in anger at my lines. It must be premised, that these birds, generally speaking, give the preference to insect food and worms; and when flights of them have taken their station near 181the banks of large rivers, margined by lowlands, we shall find, that the bulk of them will remain there, and feed in those places; and, in the uplands, we shall observe small restless parties only. But in the midland and some other counties, the flocks that are resident have not always these meadows to resort to, and they then feed on the haws as long as they remain. In this county, the extensive lowlands of the river Severn in open weather are visited by prodigious flocks of these birds; but as soon as snow falls, or hard weather comes on, they leave these marshy lands, because their insect food is covered or become scarce, visit the uplands, to feed on the produce of the hedges, and we see them all day long passing over our heads in large flights on some distant progress, in the same manner as our larks, at the commencement of a snowy season, repair to the turnip fields of Somerset and Wiltshire. They remain absent during the continuance of those causes which incited their migration; but, as the frost breaks up, and even before the thaw has actually commenced, we see a large portion of these passengers returning to their worm and insect food in the meadows, attended probably by many that did not take flight with them—though a great number remain in the upland pastures, feeding promiscuously as they can. In my younger days, a keen, unwearied sportsman, it was always observable, that in hard weather these birds increased prodigiously in number in the counties far distant from the meadow lands, though we knew not the reason; and we usually against this time provided tempting bushes of haws, preserved in a barn, to place in frequented hedges, near our secret standings. When the fieldfare first arrives, its flesh is dark, thin, and scurfy; but, having fed a little time in the hedges, its rump and side veins are covered with fat. This is, in part, attributable to suppression of perspiration by the cold, and partly to a nutritive farinaceous food; its flesh at the time becoming bluish and clean. The upland birds are in this state, from perhaps the end of November till the end of January, according as the hedge fruit has held out; and at this period they are comparatively tame: afterward, though 182the flights may be large, they become wild; and the flesh, assuming its darkness, manifests that their food has not been farinaceous. The distant foreign migrations, which have been stated to take place from the meadows of the Severn, I believe to be only these inland trips; and that the supposed migrators returned to those stations fat and in good condition, owing to their having fed during their absence on the nutricious berry of the white thorn. I have several times seen the fruit on our hedges refused by these birds, and this too in no very temperate season; but in all these cases, the summer had been ungenial—the berries had not ripened well, they were nipped by the frosts of October, and hung on the sprays dark in color, small, and juiceless in substance. The summer of 1825 produced the finest and largest haws I ever remember. They were in general of a bright red hue, and filled with farinaceous pulp; and in consequence, though the season was uncommonly mild and open, long before Christmas, little wandering parties of these birds consumed the whole of them.

Perfectly gregarious as the fieldfare is, yet we observe every year, in some tall hedge-row, or little, quiet pasture, two or three of them that have withdrawn from the main flocks, and there associate with the blackbird and the thrush. They do not appear to be wounded birds, which from necessity have sought concealment and quiet, but to have retired from inclination; and I have reason to apprehend that these retreats are occasionally made for the purpose of forming nests, though they are afterwards abandoned without incubation; as I have now before me the egg of a bird, which I believe to be that of a fieldfare, taken from a nest somewhat like that formed by the song-thrush, in 1824. Its color is uniform—a rather pale blue; it is larger than that of the thrush, obtuse at both ends, and unlike any egg produced by our known British birds. These retiring birds linger with us late in the season, after all the main flights are departed, as if reluctant to leave us; but towards the middle or end of 183April these stragglers unite, form a small company, and take their flight.

Rural sounds, the voices, the language of the wild creatures, as heard by the naturalist, belong to, and are in concord with the country only. Our sight, our smell, may perhaps be deceived for an interval by conservatories, horticultural arts, and bowers of sweets; but our hearing can in no way be beguiled by any semblance of what is heard in the grove or the field. The hum, the murmur, the medley of the mead, is peculiarly its own, admits of no imitation, and the voices of our birds convey particular intimation, and distinctly notify the various periods of the year, with an accuracy as certain as they are detailed in our calendars. The season of spring is always announced as approaching by the notes of the rookery, by the jangle or wooing accents of the dark frequenters of its trees; and that time having passed away, these contentions and cadences are no longer heard. The cuckoo then comes, and informs us that spring has arrived; that he has journeyed to us, borne by gentle gales in sunny days; that fragrant flowers are in the copse and the mead, and all things telling of gratulation and of joy: the children mark this well-known sound, spring out, and cuckoo! cuckoo! as they gambol down the lane: the very plow-boy bids him welcome in the early morn. It is hardly spring without the cuckoo’s song; and having told his tale, he has voice for no more—is silent or away. Then comes the dark, swift-winged marten, glancing through the air, that seems afraid to visit our uncertain clime: he comes, though late, and hurries through his business here, eager again to depart, all day long in agitation and precipitate flight. The bland zephyrs of the spring have no charms with them; but basking and careering in the sultry gleams of June and July, they associate in throngs, and, screaming, dash round the steeple or the ruined tower, to serenade their nesting mates; and glare and heat are in their train. When the fervor of summer ceases, this bird of the sun will depart. The evening robin from the summit of some leafless bough, or projecting point, tells us that autumn is come, and 184brings matured fruits, chilly airs, and sober hours, and he, the lonely minstrel now that sings, is understood by all. These four birds thus indicate a separate season, have no interference with the intelligence of the other, nor could they be transposed without the loss of all the meaning they convey, which no contrivance of art could, supply; and, by long association, they have become identified with the period, and in peculiar accordance with the time.

We note birds in general more from their voices than their plumage; for the carols of spring may be heard involuntarily, but to observe the form and decoration of these creatures, requires an attention not always given. Yet we have some native birds beautifully and conspicuously feathered; the goldfinch, the chaffinch, the wagtails, are all eminently adorned, and the fine gradations of sober browns in several others are very pleasing. Those sweet sounds, called the song of birds, proceed only from the male; and, with a few exceptions, only during the season of incubation. Hence the comparative quietness of our summer months, when this care is over, except from accidental causes, where a second nest is formed; few of our birds bringing up more than one brood in the season. The redbreast, blackbird, and thrush, in mild winters will continually be heard, and form exceptions to the general procedure of our British birds; and we have one little bird, the woodlark (alunda arborea), that in the early parts of the autumnal months delights us with its harmony, and its carols may be heard in the air commonly during the calm sunny mornings of this season. They have a softness and quietness perfectly in unison with the sober, almost melancholy, stillness of the hour. The sky-lark^[56] also sings now, and its song is very sweet, full of harmony, cheerful as the blue sky and gladdening beam in which it circles and sports, and known and admired by all; but the voice of the woodlark is local, not so generally heard, from its softness must almost be listened for, to be distinguished, and has not any pretensions to the hilarity of the former. This little bird sings likewise in the spring; but, at that season, the 185contending songsters of the grove, and the variety of sound proceeding from every thing that has utterance, confuse and almost render inaudible the placid voice of the woodlark. It delights to fix its residence near little groves and copses, or quiet pastures, and is a very unobtrusive bird, not uniting in companies, but associating in its own little family parties only, feeding in the woodlands on seeds and insects. Upon the approach of man it crouches close to the ground, then suddenly darts away, as if for a distant flight, but settles again almost immediately. This lark will often continue its song, circle in the air, a scarcely visible speck, by the hour together; and the vast distance from which its voice reaches us in a calm day is almost incredible. In the scale of comparison, it stands immediately below the nightingale in melody and plaintiveness; but compass of voice is given to the linnet, a bird of very inferior powers. The strength of the larynx and of the muscles of the throat in birds is infinitely greater than in the human race. The loudest shout of the peasant is but a feeble cry, compared with that of the golden-eyed duck, the wild goose, or even this lark. The sweet song of this poor little bird, with a fate like that of the nightingale, renders it an object of capture and confinement, which few of them comparatively survive. I have known our country bird-catchers take them by a very simple but effectual method. Watching them to the ground, the wings of a hawk, or of the brown owl, stretched out, are drawn against the current of air by a string as a paper kite, and made to flutter and librate like a kestrel over the place where the woodlark has lodged; which so intimidates the bird that it remains crouching and motionless as a stone on the ground; a hand-net is brought over it, and it is caught.

From various little scraps of intelligence scattered through the sacred and ancient writings, it appears certain, as it was reasonable to conclude, that the notes now used by birds, and the voices of animals, are the same as uttered by their earliest progenitors. The language of man, without any reference to the confusion accomplished at Babel, has been broken into innumerable 186dialects, created or compounded as his wants occurred, or his ideas prompted; or obtained by intercourse with others, as mental enlargement or novelty necessitated new words to express new sentiments. Could we find a people from Japan or the Pole, whose progress in mind has been stationary, without increase of idea, from national prejudice or impossibility of communication with others, we probably should find little or no alteration in the original language of that people; so, by analogy of reasoning, the animal having no idea to prompt, no new want to express, no converse with others, (for a note caught and uttered merely is like a boy mocking the cuckoo,) so no new language is acquired. With civilized man, every thing is progressive; with animals, where there is no mind, all is stationary. Even the voice of one species of birds, except in particular cases, seems not to be attended to by another species. That peculiar call of the female cuckoo, which assembles so many contending lovers, and all the various amatorial and caressing language of others, excites no influence generally, that I am aware of; with all but the individual species, it is a dialect unknown. I know but one note, which animals make use of, that seems of universal comprehension, and this is the signal of danger. The instant that it is uttered, we hear the whole flock, though composed of various species, repeat a separate moan, and away they all scuttle into the bushes for safety. The reiterated “twink, twink” of the chaffinch, is known by every little bird as information of some prowling cat or weasel. Some give the maternal hush to their young, and mount to inquire into the jeopardy announced. The wren, that tells of perils from the hedge, soon collects about her all the various inquisitive species within hearing, to survey and ascertain the object, and add their separate fears. The swallow, that shrieking darts in devious flight through the air when a hawk appears, not only calls up all the hirundines of the village, but is instantly understood by every finch and sparrow, and its warning attended to. As Nature, in all her ordinations, had a fixed design and foreknowledge, it may be that each species had a 187separate voice assigned it, that each might continue as created, distinct and unmixed: and the very few deviations and admixtures that have taken place, considering the lapse of time, association, and opportunity, united with the prohibition of continuing accidental deviations, are very remarkable, and indicate a cause and original motive. That some of the notes of birds are as language designed to convey a meaning, is obvious from the very different sounds uttered by these creatures at particular periods: the spring voices become changed as summer advances, and the requirements of the early season have ceased; the summer excitements, monitions, informations, are not needed in autumn, and the notes conveying such intelligences are no longer heard. The periodical calls of animals, croaking of frogs, &c., afford the same reasons for concluding that the sound of their voices by elevation, depression, or modulation, conveys intelligence equivalent to an uttered sentence. The voices of birds seem applicable in most instances to the immediate necessities of their condition; such as the sexual call, the invitation to unite when dispersed, the moan of danger, the shriek of alarm, the notice of food. But there are other notes, the designs and motives of which are not so obvious. One sex only is gifted with the power of singing, for the purpose, as Buffon supposed, of cheering his mate during the period of incubation; but this idea, gallant as it is, has such slight foundation in probability, that it needs no confutation: and after all, perhaps, we must conclude, that listened to, admired, and pleasing, as the voices of many birds are, either for their intrinsic melody, or from association, we are uncertain what they express, or the object of their song. The singing of most birds seems entirely a spontaneous effusion produced by no exertion, or occasioning no lassitude in muscle, or relaxation of the parts of action. In certain seasons and weather, the nightingale sings all day, and most part of the night; and we never observe that the powers of song are weaker, or that the notes become harsh and untunable, after all these hours of practice. The song-thrush, in a mild moist April, will commence his tune early in 188the morning, pipe unceasingly through the day, yet, at the close of eve, when he retires to rest, there is no obvious decay of his musical powers, or any sensible effort required to continue his harmony to the last. Birds of one species sing in general very like each other, with different degrees of execution. Some counties may produce finer songsters, but without great variation in the notes. In the thrush, however, it is remarkable, that there seem to be no regular notes, each individual piping a voluntary of his own. Their voices may always be distinguished amid the choristers of the copse, yet some one performer will more particularly engage attention by a peculiar modulation or tune; and should several stations of these birds be visited in the same morning, few or none probably will be found to preserve the same round of notes; whatever is uttered seeming the effusion of the moment. At times a strain will break out perfectly unlike any preceding utterance, and we may wait a long time without noticing any repetition of it. During one spring an individual song-thrush, frequenting a favorite copse, after a certain round of tune, trilled out most regularly some notes that conveyed so clearly the words, lady-bird! lady-bird! that every one remarked the resemblance. He survived the winter, and in the ensuing season the lady-bird! lady-bird! was still the burden of our evening song; it then ceased, and we never heard this pretty modulation more. Though merely an occasional strain, yet I have noticed it elsewhere—it thus appearing to be a favorite utterance. Harsh, strained, and tense, as the notes of this bird are, yet they are pleasing from their variety. The voice of the blackbird is infinitely more mellow, but has much less variety, compass, or execution; and he too commences his carols with the morning light, persevering from hour to hour without effort, or any sensible faltering of voice. The cuckoo wearies us throughout some long May morning with the unceasing monotony of its song; and, though there are others as vociferous, yet it is the only bird I know that seems to suffer from the use of the organs of voice. Little exertion as the few notes it 189makes use of seem to require, yet, by the middle or end of June, it loses its utterance, becomes hoarse, and ceases from any further essay of it. The croaking of the nightingale in June, or the end of May, is not apparently occasioned by the loss of voice, but a change of note, a change of object; his song ceases when his mate has hatched her brood; vigilance, anxiety, caution, now succeed to harmony, and his croak is the hush, the warning of danger or suspicion to the infant charge and the mother bird.