BRITISH BIRDS.

[An Outline of the Smaller British Birds, by Robert A. Slaney, Esq. M.P.]

This little volume is evidently the production of an intelligent, humane, and truly amiable mind, whose enthusiasm on a favourite study is calculated to win attention and to enamour others of the same subject.

It is painful to reflect, that while we are everywhere surrounded by natural objects, animate and inanimate, each replete with interest and beauty of its own, so many of us should be ignorant, and thence insensible and heedless of these charms. This negligence is almost culpable, for so slight is the expense of time and study required to render ourselves familiar with many of the 259works of nature, that the busiest and poorest could afford the sacrifice, and thus put themselves in possession of a pure and cheap source of enjoyment. But old writers encumbered the simplicity of natural history with Latin and Greek terms, and words of interminable length, making appear difficult and abstruse what in reality is not so. It has been the laudable object of Mr. Slaney, as of other writers of the present day, to make these matters easy, as they should be. In the little volume now before us, our readers will find every thing perfectly intelligible to the commonest capacity, and its attentive perusal will delight and enrich their minds with numerous interesting accounts of the formation and habits of the beautiful winged creatures we every day see flitting around us, while, by indicating the course and modes of observation to be pursued, it will facilitate their acquirement of other and more extensive branches of natural history.

In allusion to the general ignorance on these subjects even among the wealthy and educated classes of society, Mr. Slaney says very amusingly, “We have sometimes asked our fair young friends if they knew as many of the smaller birds as they could count on their fingers? They usually answered confidently in the affirmative, but could seldom get much beyond one hand.”

Now this ignorance, which is mere negligence, we again say is almost culpable, and, as it tends to remove this ignorance by a single and delightful process, we therefore warmly recommend this ‘Outline of the Smaller British Birds.’ The reader will find in it, beside Mr. Slaney’s own descriptions and observations, many amusing and instructive extracts from some of the most distinguished writers on natural history, such as White of Selborne, who has so admirably described what passed under his own eyes in a province of England; Wilson, originally a common weaver of Paisley near Glasgow, who found an unknown world of beauty in the birds of the American wilds, his accounts of which unite the accuracy of philosophy with the beauty and glow of poetry; Knapp, the author of the ‘Journal of a Naturalist;’ the late Sir Humphry Davy, &c. &c.

The following extracts will give an idea of the work:—

“Perhaps, if we take a short view of our common birds, beginning with the missel thrush, the largest British songster and coming down to the golden-crested wren, it may repay our trouble. Within these limits we shall find about seventy birds, varying in size, form, habits, structure, and notes: most of which are seen, at one or other time of the year, in the fields and woods which surround our dwellings, and many of them are constantly with us. They may be divided into hard-billed birds, feeding on grain, seeds, and fruits; and soft-billed birds, on insects and worms. Some feed on both; and many grain-eaters devour insects, though few of the soft-billed eat seeds. These are again divided into families, from some peculiarity in their formation (chiefly the beak): as the finches, buntings, warblers, &c.

“In considering the birds to which we have confined our view, we find they divide themselves into three sets—winter visiters, summer visiters, and sojourners.

“The smaller winter visiters, about five in number, come to our hospitable shores in autumn, and leave us in the spring. They all come from colder climates; and as the frost locks up their sources of subsistence in the north, (where, in summer, they have built their nests and reared their young,) led by that wonderful instinct which their Maker has implanted, they direct their airy flight across the mountain and the flood.

“The summer visiters, on the other hand, coming to us in the spring, and leaving us in the autumn, all come from the south; and depart again to the regions of the sun as winter approaches.

“The winter visiters are all (except the grey wag-tail), hard-billed birds, fitted to feed on seeds, berries, and fruits found during our winters. They are chiefly gregarious, and seem by their numbers to band themselves together against the piercing season!”

The Fieldfare, the Redwing, the Starling, are the commonest of these winter visitors.

“Let us turn to our summer visiters. They come to us in the spring, as the weather becomes warmer, the earth clothed with vegetation, and the air and surface of the ground begin to teem with insect life; when the chrysalis bursts its case, the worm, and slug, and caterpillar, ‘and every creeping thing after his kind,’ come forth; then appear, led by an unseen hand, myriads of soft-billed warblers from distant lands, formed to thin the insect race, and whose services warmly deserve our gratitude and protection.

“From March till May ten thousand busy pinions ply the air, by day and night, and bring those melodious visiters from all the southern countries, where the parching heat at this season renders their food difficult to procure. As they arrive, they disperse throughout the country,—

‘They to their grassy couch, these to their nests.’

Each grove and shrubbery, each ‘bosky dell from side to side,’ each heath and upland common, each hedge and garden and petty rural homestead, receives some of these wandering minstrels. It is probable they return year after year, if undisturbed, to the same haunts; and perhaps revisit with as much pleasure as ourselves the well-known scenes of their youth—

‘When Nature pleased, for life itself was new,

And the heart pictured what the fancy drew.’

“We may smile at the idea of fancy or feeling in a bird; yet those who have closely watched those beautiful beings will readily believe as much difference in their dispositions as Cowper found in the temper of his hares. The ‘mellow lark who at Heaven’s gate sings’ must be endowed with instincts—superior to those of the ‘poor beetle that we tread upon.’ Memory birds possess in a considerable degree. Swallows will choose out the same nook for their nest year after year. That elegant little bird, the common fly-catcher, is attached to the same spot. A pair built for three summers successively in the same place, close to the writer’s study window; and their chase for gnats and other insects was under his view, as he sat reading: and for a considerable period the parent birds, ‘from early dawn till latest eve,’ might be observed catching assiduously our English muskitoes.”

Among the most interesting of these summer visitors are the nightingale, the whitethroat, the redstart, the fly-catcher, the swallow, and the cuckoo.

The third division, viz., sojourners or resident birds, are then considered. Of these only five belong to the soft-billed birds, namely, the robin and the wren, the hedge-sparrow, and the black and white water wagtail. In the classes of hard-billed birds always with us, are the nuthatch, the blackbird, the thrush, the greenfinch, the bullfinch, the goldfinch, the chaffinch, the sparrow, the lark, and others too numerous to mention here, but which will be found classified, and very ably described in Mr. Slaney’s volume.

“About twenty song birds of passage come to us, and rear their young in our island. Of these some are local species, and some but partially and thinly scattered. These guests of summer remain to enjoy our finest weather, when the warmth of the climate, and the richness of vegetation, and the harmony of nature, invite us abroad. We think that our fair readers might double the pleasure of their walks if they knew each note of their tiny visitant, and distinguished the form and plumage of every feathered songster.—p. 12.

“The nightingale is celebrated in all countries: its sober plumage of tawny brown would never attract our attention, though its light and elegant form might excite admiration. This delightful songster is not found north of Shrewsbury in the west, or Doncaster in the east; and is seldom seen in Devonshire or Cornwall. ‘It has been observed that it is not seen but where cowslips grow plentifully,’ indicating a damp, cool soil, and probably yielding those insects it delights in. All writers praise the song of this bird. We will only quote the eloquent expressions of a naturalist (Wilson) called forth by a songster of the new world:—

“‘When every object around conveys the sensation of joy, and heaven’s abundance is, as it were, showering around us the grateful heart beats in unison with the varying elevated strains of this bird. We listen to its notes in a kind of ecstasy as a hymn to the great and most adorable Creator of all. Abject must that heart be, and callous those feelings, and depraved that taste, which neither the charms of nature, nor the melody of innocence, nor the voice of gratitude or devotion, can reach.’”—p 16.

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