 Chapter 1 of birds in the calendar, this is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Birds in the Calendar by F. G. Aflalo. January, the pheasant. As birds are to be considered throughout these pages from any standpoint but that of sport, much that is of interest in connection with a bird essentially the sportsman's must necessarily be omitted. At the same time, although this gorgeous creature, the chief attraction of social gatherings throughout the winter months, appeals chiefly to the men who shoot and eat it, it is not uninteresting to the naturalist with opportunities for studying its habits under conditions more favourable than those encountered when in pursuit of it with a gun. In the first place, with the probable exception of the swan, of which something is said on a later page, the pheasant stands alone among the birds of our woodlands in its personal interest for the historian. It is not, in fact, a British bird, saved by a climatization, at all, and is generally regarded as a legacy of the Romans. The time and manner of its introduction into Britain are, it is true, veiled in obscurity. What we know on authentic evidence is that the bird was officially recognised in the reign of Harold, and that it had already come under the aegis of the game-laws in that of Henry I. During the first year of which the abbot of Amesbury held a licence to kill it, though how he contrived this without a gun is not set forth in detail. Probably it was first treed with the aid of dogs, and then shot with bow and arrow. The original pheasant, brought over by the Romans, or by whom so ever may have been responsible for its naturalisation on English soil, was a dark-coloured bird, and not the type more familiar nowadays since its frequent crosses with other species from the Far East, as well as with several ornamental types of yet more recent introduction. Into booing the standpoint of sport wherever possible from these chapters, occasional reference where it overlaps the interests of the field naturalist is inevitable. Thus there are two matters in which both classes are equally concerned when considering the pheasant. The first is the real or alleged incompatibility of pheasants and foxes in the same wood. The question of rivalry between pheasant and fox, or, as I rather suspect, between those who shoot the one and hunt the other, admits of only one answer. The fox eats the pheasant, the pheasant is eaten by the fox. This not very complex proposition may read like an excerpt from a French grammar, but it is the epitome of the whole argument. It is just possible, we have no actual evidence to go on, that under such wholly natural conditions as survive nowhere in rural England, the two might flourish side by side, the fox taking occasional toll of its agreeably flavoured neighbours, and the latter, we may suppose, their wits sharpened by adversity, gradually devising means of keeping out of the robber's reach. In the artificial environment of a hunting or shooting country, however, the fox will always prove too much for a bird dulled by much protection, and the only possible modus vivendi between those concerned must rest on a policy of given take that deliberately ignores the facts of the case. More interesting, on academic grounds at any rate, is the process of education noticeable in pheasants in parts of the country where they are regularly shot. Sport is a great educator. Foxes certainly and hares probably run the faster for being hunted. Indeed the fox appears to have acquired its pace solely as the result of the chase, since it does not figure in the Bible as a swift creature. The genuine wild pheasant in its native region, a little beyond the Caucasus, is in all probability a very different bird from its half domesticated kinsmen in Britain. I have been close to its birthplace, but never even saw a pheasant there. We are told, on what ground I have been unable to trace, that the polygamous habit in these birds is a product of artificial environment. But what is even more likely is that the true wild pheasant of western Asia, and not the acclimatised bird so-called in this country, trusts much less to its legs than our birds, which have long since learnt that there is safety in running. Moreover, though it probably takes wing more readily, it is doubtful whether it flies as fast as the pace, something a little short of forty miles an hour, that has been estimated as a common performance in driven birds at home. The pheasant is, in many respects, a very curious bird. At the threshold of life it exhibits, in common with some of its near relations, a precocity very unusual in its class, and the readiness with which pheasant chicks, only just out of the egg, run about and forage for themselves is astonishing to those unused to it. Another interesting feature about pheasants is the extraordinary difference in plumage between the sexes, a gap equaled only between the black cock and grey hen, and quite unknown in the partridge quail and grass. Yet every now and again, as if resentful of this inequality of wardrobe, an old hen pheasant will assume male plumage, and this episcene raiment indicates barrenness. Ungallant feminists have been known to cite the case of the mule pheasant as pointing a moral for the females of a more highly organised animal. The question of the pheasant's natural diet, more particularly where this is not liberally supplemented from artificial sources, brings the sportsmen in conflict with the farmer, and a demagogue whose zeal occasionally outruns his discretion, has even endeavoured to cite the mangold as its staple food. This, however, is political and not natural history. Although, however, like all grain-eating birds, the pheasant is no doubt capable of inflicting appreciable damage on cultivated land, it seems to be established beyond all question that it also feeds greedily on the even more destructive lava of the cranefly, in which case it may more than pay its footing in the fields. The foodstuff most fatal to itself is the eulife, for which, often with fatal results, it seems to have an unconquerable craving. The worst disease, however, from which the pheasant suffers is gapes, caused by an accumulation of small red worms in the windpipe that all but suffocate the victim. Reference has been made to the bird's great speed in the air, as well as to its efficiency as a runner. It remains only to add that it is also a creditable swimmer, and has been seen to take to water when escaping from its enemies. The polygamous habit has been mentioned. Ten or twelve eggs or more are laid in the simple nest of leaves, and this is generally placed on the ground, but occasionally in a low tree or hedge, or even in the disused nest of some other bird. Comparatively few of the birds referred to in the following pages appeal strongly to the epicure, but the pheasant, if not, perhaps the most esteemed of them, is at least a wholesome table bird. It should, however, always be eaten with chip potatoes and bread sauce, and not in the company of cold lettuce. Those who insist on the English method of serving it should quote the learned freeman, who, when confronted with the continental alternative, complained bitterly that he was not a silk worm. There are many reasons why the woodcock should be prized by the winter sportsman more than any other bird in the bag. In the first place there is its scarcity. Half a dozen to every hundred pheasants would, in most parts of the country, be considered a proportion at which none could grumble, and there are many days on which not one is either seen or shot. Again, there is the bird's twisting flight, which, particularly inside the cover, makes it anything but an easy target. Third and last it is better to eat than any other of our wild birds, with the possible exception of the golden plover. Taking one consideration with another, then, it is not surprising that the first warning cry of woodcock over, from the beaters, should be the signal for a sharp and somewhat erratic fusilade along the line, a salvo which the beaters themselves usually honour by crouching out of harm's way, since they know from experience that even ordinarily cool and collected shots are sometimes apt to be fired with a sudden zeal to shoot the little bird, which may cost one of them his eyesight. According to the poet, lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade, and so no doubt they do at mealtime after sunset, but we are more used to flushing them amid dry bracken, or in the course of some frozen ditch. Quite apart, however, from its exhilarating effect on the sportsman, the bird has quieter interests for the naturalist, since in its food, its breeding habits, its travels, and its appearance, it combines more peculiarities than perhaps any other bird, certainly than any other of the sportsman's birds, in these islands. It is not legally speaking a game bird, and was not included in the Act of 1824, but a game licence is required for shooting it, and it enjoys, since 1880, the protection accorded to other wild birds. This is excellent so far as it goes, but it ought to be protected during the same period as the pheasant, particularly now that it is once more established as a resident species all over Britain and Ireland. This new epoch in the history of its adventures in these islands is the work of the Wild Birds Protection Acts. In olden times, when half of Britain was under forest, and when guns were not yet invented that could shoot flying, woodcocks must have been much more plentiful than they are today. In those times, the bird was taken on the ground in springes, or when roading in the mating season in nets known as shots, that were hung between the trees. When the forest area receded, the resident birds must have dwindled to the verge of extinction, for on more than one occasion we find even a seasoned sportsman like Colonel Hawker worked up to a rare pitch of excitement after shooting woodcock in a part of Hampshire, where in our day these birds breed regularly. Thanks, however, to the protection afforded by the law, there is once again probably no county in England in which woodcocks do not nest. At the same time, it is as an autumn visitor that, with the first of the east wind in October or November, we look for this untiring little traveller from the Continent. Some people are of opinion that, since it has extended its residential range, fewer come overseas to swell the numbers. But the arrivals are in some years considerable, and if a stricter watch were kept on unlicensed gunners along the foreshore of East Anglia, very much larger numbers would find their way westwards, instead of to Leddenhall. As it is, the wanderers arrive not necessarily as has been freely asserted in poor condition, but always tired out by their journey, and numbers are secured before they have time to recover their strength. Yet those which do recover fly right across England, some continuing the journey to Ireland, and stragglers even, with help no doubt from easterly gales, having been known to reach America. The woodcock is interesting as a parent, because it is one of the very few birds that carry their young from place to place, and the only British bird that transports them clasped between her legs. A few others, like the swans and grebes, bear the young ones on the back, but the woodcocks method is unique. Skopely first drew attention to his own version of the habit, in the words pulos rostro portat. And it was old Gilbert White, who, with his usual eye to the practical, doubted whether so long and slender a bill could be turned to such a purpose. More recent observation has confirmed White's objection, and has established the fact of the woodcock holding the young one between her thighs, the beak being apparently used to steady her burden. Whether the little ones are habitually carried about in this fashion, or merely on occasion of danger, is not known. And indeed the bird's preference for activity in the dusk has invested accurate observation of its habits with some difficulty. Among well-known sportsmen who are actually so fortunate as to have witnessed this interesting performance, passing mention may be made of the late Duke of Beaufort, the Honourable Grantley Barkley, and Sir Ralph Payne Galway. Reference has already been made to the now obsolete use of nets for the capture of these birds when roding. The cock-shuts, as they were called, were spread so as to do their work after sundown. And this is the meaning of Shakespeare's allusion to cock-shut time. This roding is a curious performance on the part of the males only, and it bears some analogy to the drumming of snipe. It is accompanied, indeed, by the same vibrating noise, which may be produced from the throat as well, but is more probably made only by the beating of the wings. There appears to be some divergence of opinion as to its origin in both birds, though in that of the snipe such sound authorities as messes Abel Chapman and Harding are convinced that it proceeds from the quivering of the primaries, as the large quill feathers of the wings are called. Other naturalists, however, have preferred to associate it with the spreading tail feathers. Whether these eccentric gymnastics are performed as displays, with a view to impressing, admiring females, or whether they are merely the result of excitement at the pairing season cannot be determined. It is safe to assume that they aim at one or other of these objects, and further no one can go with any certainty. The word roding, R-O-D-I-N-G, is spelt R-O-A-D-I-N-G by Newton, who thus gives the preference to the Anglo-Saxon description of the aerial tracks followed by the bird over the alternative derivation from the French Haudet, which means to wander. The flight is at any rate wholly different from that to which the sportsman is accustomed when one of these birds is flushed in covert. In the latter case, either instinct or experience seems to have tauted extraordinary tricks of zigzag manoeuvring that not seldom save its life from a long line of over-anxious guns, though out in the open, where it generally flies in a straight line for the nearest covert, few birds of its size are easier to bring down. Fortunately, we do not in England shoot the bird in springtime, the season of roding, but the practice is in vogue in the evening twilight in every continental country, and large bags are made in this fashion. In its hungry moments the woodcock, like the snipe, has at once the advantages and handicap of so long a beak. On hard ground, in a long spell of either drought or frost, it must come with immeasurable distance of starvation, for its only manner of procuring its food in normal surroundings is to thrust its bill deep into the soft mud in search of earthworms. The bird does not, it is true, as was once commonly believed, live by suction, or, as the Irish peasants say in some parts, on water, but such a mistake might well be excused in anyone who had watched the bird's manner of digging for its food in the ooze. The long bill is exceedingly sensitive at the tip, and in all probability, by the aid of a tactile sense more highly developed than any other in our acquaintance, this organ conveys to its owner the whereabouts of worms wriggling silently down out of harm's way. On first reaching Britain, the woodcock remains for a few days on the seashore to recover from its crossing, and at this time of rest it trips over the wet sand, generally in the gloaming, and picks up shrimps and such other soft food as is uncovered between tidal marks. It is not among the easiest of birds to keep for any length of time in captivity, but if due attention be paid to its somewhat difficult requirements in the way of suitable food, success is not unattainable. On the whole, bread and milk has been found the best artificial substitute for its natural diet. With the kiwi of New Zealand, a bird not even distantly related to the woodcock, and a cousin rather of the ostrich, but equipped with much the same kind of bill as the subject of these remarks, an even closer imitation of the natural food has been found possible in menageries. The bill of the kiwi, which has the nostrils close to the tip, is even more sensitive than that of the woodcock, and is employed in very similar fashion. At Regent's Park, the keeper supplies the bird with fresh worms so long as the ground is soft enough for spade work. They are left in a pan, and the kiwi eats them during the night. In winter, however, when worms are not only hard to come by in sufficient quantity, but also frost-bitten and in poor condition, an efficient substitute is found in shredded fillet steak, which, whether it accepts it for worms or not, the New Zealander devours with the same relish. When a woodcock lies motionless among dead leaves, it is one of the most striking illustrations of protective colouring to be found anywhere. Time and again the sportsman all but treads on one which is betrayed only by its large bright eye. There are men, who in their eagerness to add it to the bag, do not hesitate in such circumstances to shoot a woodcock on the ground. But a man so fond of ground game should certainly be refused a game-licence, and should be allowed to shoot nothing but rabbits. End of Chapter 2. Recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 3 of Birds in the Calendar This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding Birds in the Calendar by Frederick G. Alflalo March The Woodpigeon The woodpigeon is many things to many men. To the farmer who has some claim to priority of verdict, it is a curse, even as the rabbit in Australia, the lemming in Norway, or the locust in Algeria. The tiller of the soil, whose business brings him in open competition with the natural appetites of such voracious birds, beasts, or insects, regards his rivals from a standpoint which has no room for sentiment. And the woodpigeons are to our farmers, particularly in the well-wooded districts of the West Country, even as Carthage was to Cato the Sensor, something to be destroyed. It is this attitude of the farmer which makes the woodpigeon preeminently the bird of February. All through the shooting season just ended, a high pigeon has proved an irresistible temptation to the guns, whether cleaving the sky above the treetops, doubling behind a broad elm, or suddenly swinging out of a gaunt fur. Yet it is in February, when other shooting is at an end, and the covets no longer echo the fusillade of the past four months, that the farmers, furious at the sight of green root crops grazed as close as by sheep, and of young clover dug up over every acre of their tilling, welcome the co-operation of sportsmen glad to use up the balance of their cartridges in organised pigeon battus. These gatherings have, during the past five years, become an annual function in parts of Devonshire and the neighbouring counties. And if the bag is somewhat small in proportion to the guns engaged, a wholesome spirit of sport informs those who take part, and there is a curiously utilitarian atmosphere about the proceedings. Every one seems conscious that, in place of the usual idle pleasure of the covert side or among the turnips, he is out for a purpose, not merely killing birds that have been reared to make his holiday, but actually helping the farmers in their fight against nature. As, moreover, recent scares of an epidemic not unlike Diphtheria have precluded the use of the birds for table purposes, the powder is burnt with no thought of the pot. The usual plan is to divide the guns in small parties and to post these in neighbouring plantations, or lining hedges overlooking these spinnies. At a given signal the firing commences and is kept up for several hours, a number of the marauders being killed and the rest so harried that many of them must leave the neighbourhood, only to find a similar warm welcome across the border. Some such concerted attack has, of late years, been rendered necessary by the great increase in the winter invasion from overseas. It is probable that, as most writers on the subject insist, the wanderings of these birds are, for the most part, restricted to these islands and are mere food forays, like those which cause locusts to desert a district that they have stripped bare for past years new. At the same time it seems to be beyond all doubt the fact that huge flocks of wood pigeons reach our shores annually from Scandinavia, and their inroads have had such serious results that it is only by joint action that their numbers can be kept under. For such work February is obviously the month, not only because most of their damage to the growing crops and seeds is accomplished at this season, but also because large numbers of gunners, no longer able to shoot game, are thus at the disposal of the farmers, and only too glad to prolong their shooting for a few weeks to such good purpose. Many birds are greedy. The cormorant has a higher reputation of the sort to live up to than even the hog, and some of the horn-bills, though less familiar, are endowed with gargantuan appetites. Yet the ring-dove could probably vie with any of them. Mr. Harding mentions, having found in the crop of one of these birds, thirty-three acorns and forty-four beech nuts, while no fewer than one hundred and thirty-nine of the latter were taken together with other food remains from another. It is no uncommon experience to see the crop of a wood pigeon that is brought down from a great height burst on reaching the earth with a report like that of a pistol, and scatter its undigested contents broadcast. Little wonder, then, that the farmers welcome the slaughter of so formidable a competitor. It is one of their biggest customers, and pays nothing for their produce. One told me, not long ago, that the wood pigeons had got at a little patch of young rape, only a few acres in all, which had been uncovered by the drifting snow, and had laid it as bare as if the earth had never been planted. Seeing what hearty meals the wood pigeon makes, it is not surprising that it should sometimes throw up pellets of undigested material. This is not, however, a regular habit, as in the case of hawks and owls, and is rather perhaps the result of some abnormally irritating food. Pigeons digest their food with the aid of a secretion in the crop, and it is on this soft material, popularly known as pigeon's milk, that they feed their nestlings. This method suggests an allergy to that of the petrels, which rear their young on fish oil partly digested after the same fashion. Indeed, all the pigeons are devoted parents. Though the majority build only a very pretentious platform of sticks for the two eggs, they sit very close, and feed the young ones untiringly. Some of the pigeons of Australia indeed go even further. Not only do they build a much more substantial nest of leafy twigs, but the male bird actually sits throughout the day, such paternal sense of duty being all the more remarkable from the fact that these pigeons of the antipodes usually lay but a single egg. Australia, with the neighbouring islands, must be a perfect paradise for pigeons, since about half of the species known to science occur in that region only. The wonga-wonga and bronze wing and great fruit pigeons are, like the bald-pates of Jamaica, all favourite birds with sportsmen, and some of the birds are far more brightly coloured than ours. It is, however, noticeable that even the gayest Queensland species, with wings shot with every prismatic hue, are dull-looking birds seen from above, and the late Dr A. R. Wallace regarded this as affording protection against keen-eyed hawks on the forage. His ingenious theory receives support from the well-known fact that in many of the islands, where pigeons are even more plentiful, but where also hawks are few, the former wear bright clothes on their back as well. The woodpigeon has many names in rural England, that by which it is referred to in the foregoing notes is not perhaps the most satisfactory, since, with the possible exception of the smaller stock-dove, which lays its eggs in rabbit burrows, and the rock-dove, which nests in the cliffs, all the members of the family need trees if only to roost and nest in. A more descriptive name is that of ring-dove, easily explained by the white collar, but the bird is also known as kushet, queast, or even culver. The last named, however, which will be familiar to readers of Tennyson, probably alludes specifically to the rock-dove, as it undoubtedly gave its name to culver cliff, a prominent landmark in the Isle of White, where these birds have at all times been sparingly in evidence. The ring-dove occasionally rears a nestling in captivity, but it does not seem at any time of life to prove a very attractive pet. White found it strangely ferocious, and another writer describes it as listless and uninteresting. The only notable success on record is that scored by a singeon, who set some of the eggs under a tame pigeon and secured one survivor that appears to have grown quite tame, but was, unfortunately, eaten by a hawk. At any rate, it did its kind good service by enlisting on their side the pen of the most ardent apologist they have ever had. Indeed, singeon did not hesitate to rate the farmers soundly for persecuting the bird in willful ignorance of its unpaid services in clearing their ground of noxious weeds. Yet, however true his eloquent plea may have been in respect of his native Lothian, there would be some difficulty in persuading South country agriculturists of the wood-pigeons' hidden virtues. To those, however, who do not so, that they may reap, the subject of these remarks has irresistible charm. There is doubtless monotony in its cooing, yet, heard in a still plantation of furs, with no other sound than perhaps the distant call of a shepherd, or barking of a farm dog, it is a music singularly in harmony with the peaceful scene. The arrow-y flight of these birds, when they come in from the fields at sundown and fall like rushing waters on the treetops, is an even more memorable sound. To the sportsman, above all, the wood-pigeon shows itself a splendid bird of freedom, more cunning than any hand-reared game-bird, swifter on the wing than any other purely wild bird, a welcome addition to the bag, because it is hard to shoot in the open, and because in life it was a sore trial to a class already harassed with their share of this life's troubles. CHAPTER 4 OF BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR Birds in the calendar by Frederick G. Aflalo. April. Birds in the High Hall Garden. All March the rooks were busy in the swaying elms, but it is these softer evenings of April, when the first young leaves are beginning to frame the finished nests, and the boisterous winds of last month no longer drown the babble of the treetop parliament at the still hour when farm labourers are homing from the fields, that the rooks peculiarly strike their own note in the country scene. There is no good reason to confuse these curious and interesting foul with any other of the crow family. Collectively they may be recognised by their love of fellowship, for none are more sociable than they. Individually the rook is stamped unmistakably by the bald patch on the face, where the feathers have come away round the base of the beak. The most generally accepted explanation of this disfigurement is the rook's habit of thrusting its bill deep in the earth in search of its daily food. This, on the face of it, looks like a reasonable explanation, but it should be borne in mind that not only do some individual rooks retain through life the feathers normally missing, but that several of the rook's cousins dip into nature's larder in the same fashion without suffering any such loss. However the featherless patch on the rook's cheeks suffices whatever its cause, as a mark by which to recognise the bird living or dead. Unlike its cousin the jack-door, which commonly nests in the cliffs, the rook is not, perhaps, commonly associated with the immediate neighbourhood of the sea, but a colony close to my own home in Devonshire displays sufficiently interesting adaptation to estuarine conditions to be worth passing mention. Just in the same way that gulls make free of the wireworms on windswept plowlands, so in early summer do the old rooks come sweeping down from the elms on the hill that overlooks my fishing-ground, and take their share of cockles and other muddy fare in the bank uncovered by the falling tide. Here, in company with gulls, turnstones, and other fowl of the foreshore, the rooks strut importantly up and down, digging their powerful bills deep in the ooze, and occasionally bullying weaker neighbours out of their hard-earned spoils. The rook is a villain, yet there is something irresistible in the effrontery with which one will hop side-long on a gorging gull, which beats a hasty retreat before its sable rival, leaving some half-prized shellfish to be swallowed at sight, or carriage to the greedy little beaks in the treetops. While rooks are far more sociable than crows, the two are often seen in company, not always on the best of terms, but usually in a conditioned suggestive of armed neutrality. An occasional crow visits my estuariate low tide, but though the bird would be a match for any single rook, I never saw any fighting between them. Possibly the crow feels its loneliness, and realises that in case of trouble none of its brothers are there to see fair play. Yet carrion crows, like herons, are among the rook's most determined enemies, and cases of rookries being destroyed by both birds are on record. On the other hand, though the heron is the far more powerful bird of the two, heronries have likewise been scattered and their trees appropriated by rooks, probably in overwhelming numbers. Of the two, the heron is, particularly in the vicinity of a preserved trout stream, the more costly neighbour. Indeed, it is the only other bird which nests in colonies of such extent, but there is this marked difference between herons and rooks, that the former are sociable only in the colony. When away on its own business, the heron is among the most solitary of birds, having no doubt, like many other fishermen, learnt the advantage of its own company. One of the most remarkable habits in the rook is that of visiting the old nests in midwinter. Now and again it is true a case of actually nesting at that season has been noticed, but the fancy for sporting round the deserted nests is something quite different from this. I have watched the birds at the nests on short winter days, year after year, but never yet saw any confirmation of the widely accepted view that their object is the putting in order of their battered homes for the next season. It seems a likely reason, but in that case the birds would surely be seen carrying twigs for the purpose, and I never saw them do so before January. What other attraction the empty nurseries can have for them is a mystery, unless indeed they are sentimental enough to like revisiting old seams and co-ing over old memories. The proximity of a rookery does not affect all people alike. Some, who ordinarily dwelling in cities suffer from lack of bird neighbours, would regard the deliberate destruction of a rookery as an act of vandalism. A few, as a matter of fact, actually set about establishing such a colony, where none previously existed, an ambition that may generally be accomplished without extreme difficulty. All that is needed is to transplant a nest or two of young rooks and lodge them in suitable trees. The parent birds usually follow, rear the broods, and forthwith found a settlement for future generations to return to. Even artificial nests with suitable supplies of food have succeeded, and it seems that the rook is nowhere a very difficult neighbour to attract and establish. Why are rooks more sociable than ravens, and what do they gain from such communalism? These are favourite questions with persons informed with an intelligent passion for acquiring information, and the best answer, without any thought of irreverence, is, God knows. It is most certain that we at any rate do not, so far from explaining how it was that rooks came to build their nests in company, we cannot even guess how the majority of birds came to build nests at all, instead of remaining satisfied with the simpler plan of laying their eggs in the ground that is still good enough for the petrels, penguins, kingfishers, and many other kinds. Protection of the eggs from rain, frost, and natural enemies suggests itself as the object of the nest. But the last only would, to some extent, be furthered by the gregarious habit, and even so we have no clue as to why it should be any more necessary for rooks than for crows. To quote, as some writers do, the numerical superiority of rooks over ravens, as evidence of the benefits of communal nesting, is to ignore the long hostility of shepherds towards the latter birds, on which centuries of persecution have told irreparably. Rooks, on the other hand, though also regarded in some parts of these islands as suspects, have never been harassed to the same extent. And if anything in the nature of general warfare were to be inaugurated against them, the gregarious habit, so far from being a protection, would speedily and disastrously facilitate their extermination. Another curious habit noticed in these birds, is that of flying on fine evenings to a considerable height, and then swooping suddenly to earth, often on their backs. These antics, comparable to the drumming of snipe and roding of woodcock, are probably to be explained on the same basis of sexual emotion. The so-called Parliament of the Rooks probably owes much of its detail to the florid imagination of enthusiasts, always ready to exaggerate the wonders of nature. But it also seems to have some existence in fact, and privileged observers have actually described the trial and punishment of individuals that have broken the laws of the Commune. I never saw this procedure among Rooks, but once watched something very similar among the famous dogs of Constantinople, which no longer exist. The most important problem, however, in connection with the Rook, is the precise extent to which the bird is the farmer's enemy or his friend. On the solution hangs the Rook's fate in an increasingly practical age, which may at any moment put sentiment on one side, and decree for it the fate that is already overtaking its big cousin, the raven. Scotch farmers have long turned their thumbs down and regarded Rooks as food for the gun, but in South Britain the bird's apologists have hitherto been able to hold their own and avert catastrophe from their favourite. The evidence is conflicting. On the one hand it seems undeniable that the Rook eats grain and potato shoots. It also snaps young twigs off the trees, and may, like the jay and magpie, destroy the eggs of game-birds. On the other hand, particularly during the weeks when it is feeding its nestlings, it admittedly devours quantities of wireworms, leather grubs, and weevils, as well as of couch-grass and other noxious weeds, while some of its favourite dainties, such as thistles, walnuts, and acorns, will hardly be grudged at any time. It is not an easy matter to decide, and if the Rook is to be spared, economy must be tempered with sentiment, in which case the evidence will perhaps be found to justify a verdict of guilty with a strong recommendation to mercy. Ruth Golding With the single exception of the nightingale, bird of lovers, no other has been more written of in prose or verse than the so-called harbinger of spring. This is a foolish name for a visitor that does not reach our shores before, at any rate, the middle of April. Even Whitaker allows us to recognise the coming of spring nearly a month earlier, and for myself, impatient if only for the illusion of nature's awakening, I date my spring from the ending of the shortest day. Once the days begin to lengthen, it is time to glance at the elms for the return of the Rooks, and to get out one's fishing tackle again. Yet the cuckoo comes rarely before the third week of April, save in the fervent imagination of premature heralds, who, giving rain to a fancy winged by desire, or honestly deceived by some village cuckoo-clock heard on their country rambles, solemnly write to the papers announcing the inevitable March cuckoo. They know better in the Channel Islands, for in the second week of April, and not before, there are cuckoos in every bush, hundreds of exhausted travellers pausing for strength to complete the rest of their journey to Britain. Not on the return migration in August do the wanderers assemble in the islands, since, having but lately set out, they are not yet weary enough to need the rest. The only district of England in which I have heard of similar gatherings of cuckoos is East Anglia, where, about the time of their arrival, they regularly collect in the bushes, and indulge in preliminary gambles before flying north and west. Cuckoos then reach these islands about the third week of April, and they leave us again at the end of the summer, the old birds flying south in July, the younger generation following three or four weeks later. Goodness knows by what extraordinary instinct these young ones know the way. But the young cuckoo is a marvel altogether in the manner of its education, since, when one comes to think of it, it has no upbringing by its own parents, and cannot even learn how to cry cuckoo by example or instruction. Its foster parents speak another language, and its own folk have ceased from singing by the time it is out of the nest. A good deal has been written about the way in which the note varies, chiefly in the direction of greater harshness, and a more staccato and less sustained note towards the end of the cuckoo's day. According to the rustic rhyme it changes its tune in June, which is probably poetic license, rather than the fruits of actual observation. It is, however, commonly agreed that the cuckoo is less often heard as the time of its departure draws near, and the easiest explanation of its silence, once the breeding season is ended, is that the note being the love-call of a polygamous bird is no longer needed. In Australia the female cuckoo is handsomely barred with white, whereas the male is uniformly black. But with our bird it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish one sex from the other on the wing, and were it not for occasional evidence of females having been shot when actually calling, we might still believe that it is the male only that makes this sound. The note is joyous only in the poet's fancy, just as he has also read sadness into the sobbing of the nightingale. There is indeed, when we consider its life, something fantastic in the hypothesis that the cuckoo can no-no trouble in life merely because it escapes the rigours of our winter. Eternal summer must be a delight, but the cuckoo has to work hard for the privilege, and it must at times be harried to the verge of desperation by the small birds that continually mob it in broad daylight. This behaviour on the part of its pertinacious little neighbours has been the occasion of much futile speculation. But the one certain result of such persecution is to make the cuckoo, along with its fellow sufferer, the owls, preferably active in the sweet piece of the gloaming when its puny tyrants are gone to roost. Much-heated argument has raged round the real or supposed sentiment that inspires such demonstrations on the part of linets, sparrows, chaffinches, and other determined hunters of the cuckoo. It seems impossible when we observe the larger bird's unmistakable desire to win free of them, to attribute friendly feelings to its pursuers. Yet some writers have held the curious belief that, with lingering memories of the days when, a year ago, they devoted themselves to the ugly foster-child, the little birds still regard the stranger with affection. If so, then they have an eccentric way of showing it, and the cuckoo, driven by the chattering little term against from pillar to post, may well pray to be saved from its friends. On the other hand, even though convinced of their hostility, it is not easy to believe, as some folks tell us, that they mistake the cuckoo for a hawk. Even the human eye, though slower to take note of such differences, can distinguish between the two, and the cuckoo's note would still further undeceive them. The most satisfactory explanation of all, perhaps, is that the nest memories do in truth survive, not, however, investing the cuckoo with a halo over romance, but rather branding it as an object of suspicion, an interloper, to be driven out of the neighbourhood at all costs, ere it has time to billet its offspring on the hardworking residence. All of which is, needless to say, the merest guesswork, since any attempt to interpret the simplest actions of birds is likely to lead us into erroneous conclusions. Yet, of the two, it certainly seems more reasonable to regard the smaller birds as resenting the parasitic habit in the cuckoo, than to admit that they can actually welcome the murder of their own offspring to make room in the nest for the ugly changeling foisted on them by this fly-by-night. On the Lucus our known Lucendo principle, the cuckoo is chiefly interesting as a parent. The bare fact is that our British kind builds no nest of its own, but puts its eggs out to hatch, choosing for the purpose the nests of numerous small birds which it knows to be suitable. Further investigation of the habits of this not very secretive bird shows that she first lays her egg on the ground, and then carries it in her bill to a neighbouring nest. Whether she first chooses the nest and then lays the egg destined to be hatched in it, or whether she lays each egg when so moved, and then hunts about for a home for it, has never been ascertained. The former method seems the more practical of the two. On the other hand, little nests of the right sort are so plentiful in May, that with her mother instinct to guide her, she could always find one at a few moments notice. Some people who are never so happy as when making the wonders of nature seem still more wonderful than they really are, have declared that the cuckoo lays eggs to match those among which she deposits them, or that at any rate she chooses the nests of birds whose eggs approximately resemble her own. I should have liked to believe this, but am, unfortunately, debarred by the memory of about forty cuckoo's eggs that I took seven and twenty summers ago in the woods around Dartford Heath. The majority of these were found in hedge sparrows' nests, and the absolute dissimilarity between the great spotted egg of the cuckoo and the little blue egg of its so-called dupe would have impressed even a colour-blind animal. Occasionally, I believe, a blue cuckoo's egg has been found, but such a freak could hardly be the result of design. As a matter of fact, there is no need for any such elaborate deception. Up to the moment of hatching, the little foster parents have, in all probability, no suspicion of the trick that has been played on them. Birds do not take deliberate notice of the size or colour of their own eggs. Keaton somewhere relates how he once induced a blackbird to sit on the eggs of a thrush, and a lapwing on those of a red shank. So, too, farmyard hens will hatch the eggs of ducks or game-birds, and wild birds can even be persuaded to sit on eggs made of painted wood. Why then, since they are so careless of appearances, should the cuckoo go to all manner of trouble to match the eggs of hedge sparrows, robin, or warbler? The bird would not notice the difference, and even if she did, she would probably sit quite as close, if only for the sake of the other eggs of her own laying. Once the ugly nestling is hatched, there comes swift awakening. Yet there is no sort of reprisal or desertion. It looks rather as if the little foster parents are hypnotised by the uncouth guest, for they see their own young ones elbowed out of the home, and continue with unflagging devotion to minister to the insatiable appetite of the greedy little murderer. A bird so imbued as the parasitic cuckoo with the wanderlust would make a very careless parent, and we must therefore perhaps revise our unflattering estimate of its attitude, and admit that it does the best it can by its offspring, by putting them out to nurse. This habit, unique among British birds, is practised by many others elsewhere, and in particular by the American trupils or cattle starlings. One of these indeed goes even farther, since it entrusts its eggs to the care of a nest building cousin. There are also American cuckoos that build their own nest and incubate their own eggs. On the whole our cuckoo was a friend to the farmer, for it destroys vast quantities of hairy caterpillars that no other bird, resident or migratory, would touch. On the other hand, no doubt, the numbers of other small useful birds must suffer, not alone because the cuckoo sucks their eggs, but also because, as has been shown, the rearing of every young cuckoo means the destruction of the legitimate occupants of the nest. So far, however, as the farmer is concerned, this is probably balanced by the reflection that a single young cuckoo is so rapacious as to need all the insect food available. The cuckoo, like the woodcock, is supposed to have its forerunner, just as the small horned owl, which reaches our shores a little in advance of the latter, is popularly known as the woodcock owl, so also the rhineck, which comes to us about the same time as the first of the cuckoos, goes by the name of cuckoo-leader. It is never a very conspicuous bird and appears to be rarer nowadays than formerly. Schoolboys know it best from its habit of hissing like a snake, and giving them a rare fright when they cautiously insert a predatory hand in some hollow tree in search of a possible nest. It is in such situations that, along with titmice and some other birds, the rhineck rears its young, and it doubtless owes many an escape to this habit of hissing, accompanied by a vigorous twisting of its neck and the infliction of a sufficient peck, easily mistaken in a moment of panic for the bite of an angry adder. Thus does nature protect her weaklings. End of Chapter 5. Recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 6 of Birds in the Calendar This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding Birds in the Calendar by Frederick G. Aflalo June Voices of the Night The majority of nocturnal animals, more particularly those bent on spoliation, are strangely silent. True frogs croak in the marshes, bats shrill overhead at so high a pitch that some folks cannot hear them, and owls hoot from their ruins in a fashion that some vote melodious and romantic, while others associate the sound rather with midnight crime and dislike it accordingly. The badger, on the other hand, with the otter and fox, all of them sad thieves from our point of view, have learnt whatever their primeval habits to go about their marauding in stealthy silence, and it is only in less settled regions that one hears the jackals barking, the hyenas howling, and the browsing deer whistling through the night-watches. There are, however, two of our native birds, or rather summer visitors, since they leave us in autumn, closely associated with these warm June nights, the stillness of which they break in very different fashion, and these are the Nightingale and Nightjar. Each is of considerable interest in its own way. It is not to be denied that the churning note of the Nightjar is, to ordinary ears, the reverse of attractive, and the bird is not much more pleasing to the eyes and to the ear, while the Nightingale, on the contrary, produces such sweet sounds as made Isaac Walton marvel what music God could provide for his saints in heaven when he gave such as this to sinners on earth. The suggestion was not wholly his own, since the father of Angling borrowed it from a French writer, but he vastly improved on the original, and the passage will long live in the hearts of thousands who care not a jot for his instructions in respect of worms. At the same time the Nightjar, though the less attractive bird of the two, is fully as interesting as its comrade of the summer darkness, and there should be no difficulty in indicating the little that they have in common, as well as much wherein they differ in both habits and appearance. Both then are birds of sober attire. Indeed, of the two, the Nightjar, with its soft and delicately penciled plumage and the conspicuous white spots, is perhaps the handsomer, though, as it is seen only in the gloaming, its quiet beauty is but little appreciated. The unobtrusive dress of the Nightingale, on the other hand, is familiar in districts in which the bird abounds, and is commonly quoted by contrast with its unrivalled voice as the converse of the gaudy colouring of raucous macaws and parakeets. As has been said, both these birds are summer migrants, the Nightingale arriving on our shores about the middle of April, the Nightjar perhaps a fortnight later. Thenceforth, however, their programmes are wholly divergent, for whereas the Nightjar's proceed to scatter over the lengths and breadth of Britain, penetrating even to Ireland in the west, and as far north as the Hebrides, the Nightingale stops far short of these extremes, and leaves whole counties of England, as well as probably the whole of Scotland, and certainly the whole of Ireland, out of its calculations. It is, however, well known that its range is slowly but surely extending towards the west. This curiously restricted distribution of the Nightingale, indeed within the limits of its summer home, is among the most remarkable of the many problems confronting the student of distribution. And successive ingenious but unconvincing attempts to explain its seeming eccentricity, or at any rate caprice, in the choice of its nesting range, only make the confusion worse. Briefly, in spite of a number of doubtful and even suspicious reports of the birds' occurrence outside of these boundaries, it is generally agreed by the soundest observers that its travels do not extend much north of the city of York, or much west of a line drawn through Exeter and Birmingham. By way of complicating the argument, we know on good authority that the Nightingale's range is equally peculiar elsewhere, and that whereas it likewise shuns the departments in the extreme west of France, it occurs all over the peninsula, a region extending considerably farther into the sunset, than either Brittany or Cornwall, in both of which it is unknown. No satisfactory explanation of the little visitor's objection to wild whales or Cornwall has been found. And it may at once be stated that its capricious distribution cannot be accounted for by any known facts of soil, climate, or vegetation, since the surroundings which it finds suitable in Kent and Sussex are equally to be found down in the west country, but fail to attract their share of Nightingale's. The song of the Nightingale, in praise of which volumes have been written, is perhaps more beautiful than that of any other bird, though I have heard wonderful efforts from the mockingbird in the United States and from the bull-balls along the banks of the Jordan. The latter are sometimes more especially in poetry, regarded as identical with the Nightingale. And indeed some ornithologists told the two to be closely related. What a gap there is between the sobbing cadences of the Nightingale and the rasping note of the Nightjar, which with specific reference to a colonial cousin of that bird, Tasmanians ingeniously render as more pork. It seems almost ludicrous to include under the head of birdsong not only the music of the Nightingale, but also the croak of the raven and the booming note of the ostrich. Yet these also are the love-songs of their kind, and the hen ostrich doubtless finds more music in the thunderous note of her lord than in the faint melody of such songbirds as her native Africa provides. The Nightingale sings to his mate while she is sitting on her olive-green eggs, perching on a low branch of the tree, at foot of which the slender nest is hidden in the undergrowth. So much is known to every schoolboy, who is too often guided by the sound on his errand of plunder. And why the song of this particular warbler should have been described by so many writers as one of sadness, seeing that it is associated with the most joyous days in the bird's year, passes comprehension. So obviously is its object to hearten the female in her long and patient vigil, that as soon as the young are hatched the male's voice breaks like that of other choristers to a guttural croak. It is said, indeed, though so cruel an experiment would not appeal to many, that if the nest be destroyed just as the young are hatched, the bird recovers all his sweetness of voice and sings anew while another home is built. Although poetic license has ascribed the song to the female, it is the male Nightingale only that sings, and for the purpose aforementioned. The note of the nightjar, on the other hand, is equally uttered by both sexes, and both also have the curious habit of repeatedly clapping the wings for several minutes together. They, moreover, share the business of incubation, taking day and night duty on the eggs, which, to in number, are laid on the bare ground without any pretense of a nest, and generally on open commons in the neighbourhood of patches of fernbreak. Like the owls, these birds sleep during the day, and are active only when the sun goes down. It is this habit of seeking their insect food only in the gloaming, which makes nightjars among the most difficult of birds to study from life, and all accounts of their feeding habits must therefore be received with caution, particularly that which compares the bristles on the mouth with baleen in wales, serving as a sort of strainer for the capture of minute flying prey. This is an interesting suggestion, and may even be sober fact, but its adoption would necessitate the bird flying open mouths among the oaks and other trees, beneath which it finds the yellow underwings and cock chafers on which it feeds, and I have more than once watched it hunting its victims with the beak closed. I noticed this particularly when camping in the backwoods of eastern Canada, where the bird goes by the name of Nighthawk. In all probability its food consists exclusively of insects. Though exceptional cases have been noted in which the young birds had evidently been fed on seeds. The popular error which charges it with stealing the milk of ews and goats, from which it derives the undeserved name of goat-sucker, with its equivalent in several continental languages, is another result of the imperfect light in which it is commonly observed. Needless to say, there is no truth whatever in the accusation, for the night jar would find no more pleasure in drinking milk than we should in eating moths. Here, then, are two night voices of very different calibre. These are not our only birds that break the silence on moonlight nights in June. The common trush often sings far into the night, and the sedge warbler is a persistent carola that has often been mistaken for the nightingale. The difference in this respect between the two subjects of these remarks is that the night jar is invariably silent all through the day, whereas the nightingale sings joyously at all hours. It is only because his splendid music is more marked in the comparative silence of the night, with little or no competition, that his daylight concert is often overlooked. End of Chapter 6 Recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 7 of Birds in the Calendar This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding Birds in the Calendar by Frederick G. Aflalo July Swifts, Swallows and Martins When the trout fisherman sees the first martins and swallows dipping over the sword of the water-medos, and skimming the surface of the stream in hot pursuit of such harried water-insects as have escaped the jaws of greedy fish, he knows that summer is coming in. The signs of spring have been evident in the budding hedgerows for some weeks. The rooks are coying in the elms. The cuckoo's note has been heard in the spinny for some time before these little visitors pass in jerky flight up and down the valley. Then a little later come the swifts, the black and screaming swifts, which, though learned folk may be right in sundering them utterly from their smaller travelling companions from the sunny south, will always in the popular fancy be associated with the rest. Colonies of Swifts, Swallows and Martins are a dominant feature of English village life during the warm months, and though there are fastidious folk who take not wholly culpable exception to their little visitors on the score of cleanliness, most of us welcome them back each year, if only for the sake of the glad season of their stay. If, moreover, it is a question of choice between these untiring travellers resting in our eaves, and the stay-at-home starling or sparrow, the choice will surely fall on the first every time. The swift is the largest and most rapid in its flight, and its voice has a penetrating quality lacking in the notes of the rest. Swifts, screaming in headlong flight about a belfry, or up and down a country lane, are the embodiment of that sheer joy of life, which, in some cases with slender reason, we associate peculiarly with the bird world. Probably, however, these summer migrants are as happy as most of their class. On the wing they can have few natural enemies, though one may now and again be struck down by a hawk, and they are light on the ground so rarely as to run little risk from cats or weasels, while the structure and position of their nests alike afford effectual protection for the eggs and young. Compared with that of the majority of small birds, therefore, their existence should be singularly happy and free from care. And though that of the swift can scarcely, perhaps, when we remember its shrill voice, be described as one grand sweet song, it should not be checkered by many troubles. The greatest risk is no doubt that of being snapped up by some watchful pike, if the bird skims too close to the surface of either still or running water. And I have even heard of their being seized in this way by Hungry Marcia, those great barbel which gladden the heart of exiled anglers whose lot is cast on the banks of Himalayan rivers. It is, however, the sparrows and starlings, rivals for the nesting sites, who show themselves the irreconcilable enemies of the returned prodigals. Terrific battles are continually enacted between them with varying fortunes, and the anecdotes of these phrase would fill a volume. Jesse tells of a feud at Hampton Court, in the course of which the swallows, having only then completed their nest, were evicted by sparrows, who forthwith took possession and hatched out their eggs. Then came Nemesis, for the sparrows were compelled to go foraging for food with which to fill the greedy beaks, and during their enforced absence the swallows returned in force through the nestlings out and demolished the home. The sparrows sought other quarters and the swallows triumphantly built a new nest on the ruins of the old. A German writer relates a case of revolting reprisal on the part of some swallows against a sparrow that appropriated their nest and refused to quit. After repeated failure to evict the intruder, the swallows, helped by other members of the colony, calmly plastered up the front door so effectually that the unfortunate sparrow was walled up alive and died of hunger. This refined mode of torture is not unknown in the history of mankind, but seems singularly unsuited to creatures so fragile. The nests of these birds show as a rule little departure from the conventional plan, but they do adapt their architecture to circumstances, and I remember being much struck on one occasion by the absence of any dome or roof. It was in Asia Minor on the seashore that I came upon a cottage long deserted, its door hanging by one hinge and all the glass gone from the windows. In the empty rooms numerous swallows were rearing twittering broods in roofless nests. No doubt the birds realized that they had nothing to fear from rain, and were reluctant to waste time and labour in covering their homes with unnecessary roofs. Most birds are careful in the education of their young, and indeed thorough training at an early stage must be essential in the case of creatures that are left to protect themselves and to find their own food when only a few weeks old. Fortunately they develop with a rapidity that puts man and other mammals to shame, and the helpless bald little swift lying a gape in the nest will in another fortnight be able to fly across Europe. One of the most favoured observers of the early teaching given by the mother Swallow to her brood was an angler who told me how, one evening, when he was fishing in St Ponds, at no great distance from London, a number of baby swallows alighted on his rod. He kept as still as possible, fearful of alarming his interesting visitors. But he must at last have moved, for with one accord they all fell off his rod together, skimmed over the surface of the water, and disappeared in the direction from which they had come a few moments earlier. Swifts fly to an immense height these July evenings, mounting to such an altitude as eventually to disappear out of sight altogether. This curious habit, which is but imperfectly understood, has led to the belief that instead of roosting in the nest or among the reeds, like the swallows, the males at any rate spend the night flying about under the stars. This fantastic notion is not, however, likely to commend itself to those who pause to reflect on the incessant activity displayed by these birds the live-long day. So rarely indeed do they alight that country folk gravely deny them the possession of feet, and it is in the last degree improbable that a bird of such feverish alertness could dispense with its night's rest. No one who has watched swifts, swallows, and martins on the wing can fail to be struck by the extraordinary judgment with which these untiring birds seem to shave the arches of bridges, gate-posts, and other obstacles in the way of their flight, by so narrow a margin as continually to give the impression of catastrophe imminent and inevitable. Their escapes from collision are marvellous, but the birds are not infallible, as is shown by the untoward fate of a swallow in Sussex. In an old garden in that county there had for many years been an open doorway with no door, and through the open space the swallows had been wont year after year to fly to and fro on their hunting trips. Then came a fateful winter, during which a new owner took it into his head to put up a fresh gate and to keep it locked, and as ill luck would have it he painted it blue, which in the season of fine weather probably heightened the illusion. Back came the happy swallows to their old playground, and one of the pioneers flew headlong at the closed gate and fell stunned and dying on the ground. A minor tragedy that may possibly come as a surprise to those who regard the instincts of wild birds as unearing. That the young swallows leave our shores before their elders, late in August or early in September, is an established fact, and the instinct which guides them aright over land and sea, without assistance from those more experienced, is nothing short of amazing. The swifts, last to come, are also first to go, spending less time in the land of their birth than either swallows or martins. The fact that an occasional swallow has been seen in this country during the winter months finds expression in the adage that one swallow does not make a summer. And it was no doubt this occasional apparition, that in a less enlightened age seemed to warrant the extraordinary belief, which still eaks out a precarious existence in misinformed circles, that these birds, instead of wintering abroad, retire in a torpid condition to the bottom of lakes and ponds. It cannot be denied that these waters have occasionally, when dredged or drained, yielded a stray skeleton of a swallow, but it should be evident to the most homely intelligence that such debris merely indicates careless individuals that in passing over the water got their plumage waterlogged and were then drowned. It seems strange that Gilbert White, so accurate an observer of birds, should actually have toyed with this curious belief, though he lent rather to the more reasonable version of occasional hibernation in caves or other sheltered hiding places. The rustic mind, however, preferred, and in some unsophisticated districts, still prefers the ancient belief in diving swallows, and no weight of evidence, however carefully presented, would shake it in its creed. Fortunately this eccentric view of the swallow's habits brings no harm to the bird itself, and may thus be tolerated as an innocuous indulgence on the part of those who prefer this fiction to the even stranger truth. End of Chapter 7 Recording by Ruth Golding Chapter 8 of Birds in the Calendar This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding Birds in the Calendar by Frederick G. Aflalo August the Seagull So glorious is the flight of the seagull that it tempts us to fling aside the drier's dust theories of mechanism of flexed wings, coefficient of air resistance, and all the abracadabra of the mathematical biologist, and just to give thanks for a sight so inspiring as that of gulls ringing high in the eye of the wind over hissing comas that break on sloping beaches or around jagged rocks. These birds are one with the sea, knowing no fear of that protean monster which, since earth's beginning, has always with its unfathomable mystery, its insatiable cruelty, its tremendous strength, been a source of terror to the land-animals that dwell in sight of it. Yet the gulls sit on the curling rollers as much at their ease as swimmers in a pond, and give an impression of unconscious courage, very remarkable in creatures that seem so frail. Hunger may drive them in land, or instincts equally irresistible at the breeding season, but never the worst gale that lashes the seat of fury, for they dread it in its hour of rage as little as on still summer nights when in their hundreds they fly off the land to roost on the water outside the headlands. It is curious that there should be no mention of them in the sacred writings. We read of quails coming in from the sea, likewise of four great beasts, but of seafowl never a word, though one sees them in abundance on the coast near Jaffa, and the Hebrew writers might have been expected to weave them into the rich fabrics of their poetic imagery, as they did the pelican, the eagle, and other birds less familiar. Although seagulls have of late years been increasingly in evidence beside the bridges of London, they are still, to the majority of folk living far inland, symbolical of the August holiday at the coast, and their splendid flight and raucous cries are among the most enduring memories of that yearly escape from the smoke of cities. The voice of gulls can, with difficulty, be regarded as musical. Yet those of us who live the year round by the sea, find their plaintive mewing as nicely tuned to that wild environment as the amorous gurgling of nightingales to moonlit woods in May. Their voice may have no great range, but at any rate it is not lacking in variety, suggesting to the playful imagination laughter, tears, and other human moods to which they are in all probability strangers. The curious similarity between the note of a seagull and the whining of a cat bereft of her kittens is very striking, and was, on one occasion, the cause of my being taken in by one of these birds in a deep and beautiful backwater of the sea of Marmara, beside which I spent one pleasant summer. In this particular gulf, at the head of which stands the ancient town of Izmit, gulls, though plentiful in the open sea, are rarely in evidence, being replaced by herons and pelicans. I had not, therefore, set eyes on a seagull for many weeks, when early one morning I heard, from the farther side of a wooded headland, a new note suggestive of a wild cat, or possibly a lynx. My Greek servant tried in his patois to explain the unseen owner of the mysterious voice, but it was only when a small gull suddenly came paddling round the corner that I realised my mistake. In addition to being at home on the seashore, and particularly in estuaries and where the coast is rocky, gulls are a familiar sight in the wake of steamers at the beginning and ending of the voyage, as well as following the plow and nesting in the vicinity of inland meers and marshes. The black-headed kind is peculiarly given to bringing up its family far from the sea, just as the salmon ascends our rivers for the same purpose. It is not perhaps a very loving parent, seeing that the mortality among young gulls, many of which show signs of rough treatment by their elders, is unusually great. On most lakes, rich in fish, these birds have long established themselves, and they were, I remember, as familiar at Geneva and Neuchâtel, as along the shores of Lake Tahoe in the Californian Sierras, itself two hundred miles from the Pacific, and more than a mile above sea level. Gulls also follow the plow in hordes, not always to the complete satisfaction of the farmer, who is not unreasonably sceptical when told that they seek wireworms only and have no taste for grain. Unfortunately the ordinary scarecrow has no terror for them, and I recollect in the neighbourhood of Maryport, seeing an immense number of gulls turning up the soil in close proximity to several crows that dangling from gibbits effectively kept all black marauders away. Young gulls are, to the careless eye, apt to look larger than their parents, an illusion possibly due to the optical effect of their dappled plumage, and few people unfamiliar with these birds in their succeeding molts readily believe that the dark birds are younger than the white. Down in little Cornish harbours I have sometimes watched these young birds turned to good account by their lazy elders, who call them to the feast whenever the ebbing tide uncovers a heap of dead pilchards lying in three or four feet of water, and then pounce on them the moment they come to the surface with their booty. The fact is that gulls are not expert divers. The Cormorant and Puffin and Gilamotte can vanish at the flash of a gun, reappearing far from where they were last seen, and can pursue and catch some of the swiftest fishes underwater. Some gulls, however, are able to plunge farther below the surface than others, and the little kitty-wake is perhaps the most expert diver of them all, though in no sense at home underwater like the shag. I have often, when at anchor, ten or fifteen miles from the land, and attended by the usual convoy of seabirds that invariably gather round fishing boats, amused myself by throwing scraps of fish to them, and watching the gulls do their best to plunge below the surface when some coveted morsel was going down into the depths. And now and again a little Roman nose puffin would dive headlong and snatch the prize from under the gulls' eyes. Most of the birds were fearless enough, only an occasional saddle-back, the greater black-backed gull of the textbooks, knowing the hand of man to be against it for its raids on game and poultry would keep at a respectful distance. Considered economically, the smaller gulls at any rate have more friends than enemies, and they owe most of the latter not so much to their appetites, which set more store by offal and carrion than by anything of greater value, as to their exceedingly dirty habits. These unclean fowl are in fact anything but welcome in harbours given over in summer to smart yachting-craft. And I remember how at Avalon, the port of Santa Catalina Island, California, various devices were employed to prevent them alighting. Boats at their moorings were festooned with strips of bunting, which apparently had the requisite effect, and the railings of the club were protected by a formidable armour of nails. On the credit side of their account with ourselves, seagulls are admittedly assiduous scavengers, and their services in keeping little tidal harbours clear of decaying fish, which, if left to accumulate, would speedily breed a pestilence, cannot well be overrated. The fishermen, though they rarely molest them, do not always refer to the birds with the gratitude that might be expected, yet they are still further in their debt, being often apprised by their movement of the whereabouts of mackerel and pilchard shoals, and in thick weather getting many a friendly warning of the whereabouts of outlying rocks from the horse-cries of the gulls that have their haunts on these menaces to inshore navigation. Seagulls are not commonly made pets of, the nearest approach to such adoption, being an occasional pinioned individual enjoying qualified liberty in a backyard. Their want of popularity is easily understood, since they lack the music of the canary and the mimicry of parrots. That they are, however, capable of appreciating kindness has been demonstrated by many anecdotes. The Reverend H. A. MacPherson used to tell a story of how a young gull, found with a broken wing by the children of some mill-of-egg crofters, was nursed back to health by them until it eventually flew away. Not long after it had gone, one of the children was lost on the hillside, and the gull flying overhead recognized one of its old playmates and hovered so as to attract the attention of the child. Then, on being called, the bird settled and roosted on the ground beside him. An even more remarkable story is told of a gull taken from the nest on the coast of County Cork, and brought up by hand, until, in the following spring, it flew away in the company of some others of its kind that passed over the garden in which it had its liberty. The bird's owner reasonably concluded that he had seen the last of his protégé, and great was his astonishment when, in the first October gale, not only did the visitor return, tapping at the dining-room window for admission, as it had always done, but actually brought with it a young gull, and the two paid him a visit every autumn for a number of years. On either side of the gulls, and closely associated with them in habits and in structure, is a group of birds equally characteristic of the open coast, the skewers and turns. The skewers, darker and more courageous birds, are familiar to those who spend their August holiday sea-fishing near the land's end, where, particularly on days when the east wind brings the gannets and porpoises close in shore, the great skewer may be seen at its favourite game of swooping on the gulls, and making them disgorge or drop their launch or pilchard, which the bird usually retrieves before it reaches the water. This act of piracy has earned for the skewer its west-country sobriquet of Jack Harry, and against so fierce an onslaught, even the largest gull, though actually of heavier build than its tyrant, has no chance, and seldom indeed seems to offer the feeblest resistance. These skewers rob their neighbours in every latitude, and even in the Antarctic, one kind, closely related to our own, makes havoc among the penguins, an episode described by the late Dr Wilson, one of the heroes of the ill-fated Scott expedition. Far more pleasing to the eye are the graceful little turns or sea-swallows, fairy-like creatures with red legs and bill, long pointed wings and deeply forked tail, which skim the surface of the sea or hawk over the shallows of trout streams in search of dragonflies or small fish. It is not a very rare experience for the trout fisherman to hook a swallow which may happen to dash by at the moment of casting, but a much more unusual occurrence was that of a turn on a well-known pool of the spay, actually mistaking a salmon fly for a small fish and swooping on it, only to get firmly hooked by the bill. Fortunately for the too-venturesome turn, the fisherman was a lover of birds, and he managed with some difficulty to reel it in gently, after which it was released none the worse for its mistake. Chapter 9 of Birds in the Calendar This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Recording by Ruth Golding Birds in the Calendar by Frederick G. Aflalo September Birds in the Corn More than one of our summer visitors, like the Nightingale and Cuckoo, are less often seen than heard, but certainly the most secretive hydro of them all is the Land Rail. This harsh-voiced bird reaches our shores in May, and it was on the last of that month that I lately heard its rasping note, in a quiet park, not a mile out of a busy market town on the Welsh border, and forgave its monotone, because more emphatically than even the Cuckoo's distillable it announced that at last summer was a coming-in. This feeble-looking but indomitable traveller is closely associated during its visit with the resident Partridge. They nest in the same situations, hiding in the fields of grass and standing corn, and eventually being flushed in company by September guns walking abreast through the clover-bud. Sport is not the theme of these notes, and it will therefore suffice to remark in passing on the curious manner in which even good shots, accustomed to bring down partridges with some approach to certainty, contrive to miss these lazy flapping fowl when walking them up. Dispassionately considered, the Land Rail should be a bird that a man could scarcely miss on the first occasion of his handling a gun. In cold fact it often survives two barrels apparently untouched. This immunity it owes in all probability to its slow and heavy flight, since those whose eyes are accustomed to the rapid movement of partridges are apt to misjudge the allowance necessary for such a laggard, and to fire in front of it. It is difficult to realise that, whereas the strong winged Partridge is a stay-at-home, the deliberate Land Rail has come to us from Africa, and will, if spared by the guns, return there. Perhaps the most curious and interesting habit recorded of the Land Rail is that of feigning death when suddenly discovered, a method of self-defence which it shares with possums, spiders, and in fact other animals of almost every class. It will, if suddenly surprised by a dog, lie perfectly still, and betray no sign of life. There is, however, at least one authentic case of a Land Rail actually dying of fright when suddenly seized, and it is a disputed point whether the so-called pretence of death should not rather be regarded as a state of trance. Strict regard for the truth compels the admission that on the only occasion on which I remember taking hold of a live corn-crake, the bird, so far from pretending to be dead, pecked my wrist heartily. Just as the country folk regard the Rhineck as leader of the wandering cuckoos, and the short-eared owl as forerunner of the woodcocks, so the ancients held that the Land Rail performed the same service of pioneer to the quail on its long journeys over land and sea. Save in exceptional years, England is not visited by quail in sufficient numbers to lend interest to this aspect of a bird attractive on other grounds, but the coincidence of their arrival with us is well established. The voice of the corn-crake, easily distinguished from that of any other bird of our fields, may be approximately reproduced by using a blunt saw against the grain on hard wood. So loud is it at times that I have heard it from the open window of an express train, the noise of which drowned all other birdsong, and it seems remarkable that such a volume of sound should come from a throat so slender. Yet the rasping note is welcomed during the early days of its arrival, since, just as the cuckoo gave earlier message of spring, so the corn-crake, in sadder vain, heralds the ripeness of our briefer summer. The East Anglian name Dacahen comes from an old word descriptive of the bird's halting flight, and indeed to see a land-rail drop, as already mentioned, after flying a few yards, makes one incredulous when tracing its long voyages on the map. In the first place, however, it should be remembered that the bird does not drop back in the grass because it is tired, but solely because it knows the way to safety by running out of sight. In the second, the apparent weakness of its wings is not real. Quails have little round wings that look ill-adapted to long journeys. I have been struck by this times and again when shooting quail in Egypt and Morocco. Yet of the quail's fitness for travel there has never since Bible days been any question. The land-rail is an excellent table bird. Personally I prefer it to the partridge, but this is perhaps praising it too highly. Legally, of course, it is game, as a game-licence must be held by anyone who shoots it. And though protected in this country only under the Wild Birds Act, Irish law extends this by a month, so that it may not be shot in that country after the last day of January. Like most migratory birds, its numbers vary locally in different seasons, and its scarcity in Hampshire to which white makes reference has by no means been maintained of recent years, as large bags have been recorded in every part of that county. The common partridge is, at any rate for the naturalist, a less interesting subject than its red-legged cousin, which seems to have been first introduced from France, or possibly from the island of Guernsey, where it no longer exists, in the reign of Charles II. That this early experiment was not, however, attended by far-reaching results seems probable, since early in the reign of George III we find the Marquis of Hartford and other well-known sporting landowners making fresh attempts, the stock of Frenchmen being renewed from time to time during the next fifty years, chiefly on the east side of England, where they have always been more in evidence than farther west. In Devon and Cornwall, indeed, the bird is very rare, and in Ireland almost unknown. Its red legs stand it in good stead, for it can run like a hare, and in this way it often baffles the guns. It is not, however, so much its reluctance to rise that has brought it into dispute with keepers as its alleged habit of ousting the native bird, in much the same way as the Hanover rat has superseded the black aboriginal. Although far from the Frenchmen driving the English partridge off the soil, there appears to be even no truth in the supposed hostility between the two, since they do not commonly affect the same type of country. And even when they meet they nest in close proximity and in comparative harmony. Nevertheless, the males, even of the same species, are apt to be pugnacious in the breeding season. Both the partridge and landrail run serious risk from scythe and plough while sitting on the nest. Landrails have before now been decapitated by the swing of the scythe, and a case is on record, in which a sitting partridge, seeing that the plough was coming dangerously near her nest, actually removed the whole clutch of eggs, numbering over a score to the shelter of a neighbouring hedge. This was accomplished, probably with the help of the male, during the short time it took the plough to get to the end of the field and back, and is a remarkable illustration of devotion and ingenuity. Not for nothing indeed is the partridge a game bird, for it has been seen to attack cats and even foxes in defence of the covey. And I have seen, in the manuscript notes of the Second Earl of Marmsbury, preserved in the library at Heron Court, mention of one that drove off a carrion crow that menaced the family. Both partridge and landrail sit very close, particularly when the time of hatching is near. And Charles St. John saw a partridge which his dog, having taken off the nest, was forced to drop. None the worse for her adventure goes straight back to her duties. Though, as he adds, if it had not been that she knew the eggs were already chipping, she would in all probability have deserted her post for good and all. Whether or not France is to be regarded as the original home of the red leg, the fact remains that in that country it is becoming scarcer every year. Its numbers being maintained only in Brittany, Calvados, Orne and Sartre. Its distribution in Italy is equally capricious, for it is virtually restricted to the rocky slopes of the Apennines, the Volterano Hills in Tuscany, and the coast ranges of Elba. It seems, therefore, that in continental countries, as well as with us, the bird extends its range reluctantly. Game-preservers seem, however, to agree that partridges and pheasants are, beyond a certain point, incompatible, as with a limited supply of natural food, the smaller bird goes to the wall. Like most birds, partridges grow bold when pressed by cold and hunger, and I recollect hearing of a large covey being encountered ten or twelve years ago in an open space in the heart of the city of Frankfurt.