The only real objection to peacocks, under ordinary conditions, is the discordance of their cries, especially in thundery weather, when they scream in answer to every thunder-clap. Cock pheasants, relatives of the peacock, crow loudly at any unusual noise; and I have known them expostulate at the report of a gun; they took flight, after running to a safe distance, and their crow appeared to be in the nature of a challenge or defiance, just as a barn-door cock will exult if you give him the idea that he has driven you away.
When the vessel which carried the coffin of Queen Victoria was crossing the Solent, in 1901, some very heavy salutes were fired from the battleships, and, the day being still and the air clear, the detonations carried to an immense distance. They were distinctly heard at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, only fourteen miles from Aldington and a distance of nearly one hundred miles from the guns, in a direct line. The reports were so loud at Woodstock, near Oxford, that the pheasants began crowing in the Blenheim preserves.
At Alton there were some extensive woods and coppices on the farm, which were favourite breeding-places for pheasants, being dry and sunny. Some months before October 1, when pheasant shooting begins, a white pheasant was seen, and although he disappeared for a time, he fell eventually to the gun of the tenant. He was a beautiful bird, and was considered worth stuffing as a rarity. Albinism is not uncommon in the blackbird; I have seen two partial instances lately; one was constantly visible in my garden and meadows, with head nearly all white, and the other I saw in the public garden at Bournemouth, with the peculiarity still more developed. A white martin, or swallow, came into the house of a friend near Aldington, and was regarded as an unfavourable omen. Melanism, the opposite of albinism, is rarer, and the only instance I have seen was that of a black bullfinch at Aldington; it had evidently been mobbed as a stranger by other birds of its kind, as it was injured and nearly dead when captured. I had the specimen stuffed as a curiosity, though I am not fond of stuffed birds. It is said that hemp-seed, if given in undue quantities to cage bullfinches, will produce the black colour, even upon a bird of quite natural plumage originally, and a case of the kind is mentioned by Gilbert White.
Aldington, with its quiet apple orchards and the "island" and shrubberies below my garden, was a happy refuge for birds of all kinds, and the old pollard-willow heads a favourite nesting-place. Worcestershire people have some very curious names for birds, and some of these are also heard in Hampshire and Dorset. The green woodpecker is the "stock-eagle," "ekal," or "hickle," both in Worcestershire and Hampshire, and the word survives too in "Hickle Brook" in the Forest, and in "Hickle Street," a part of Buckle Street in Worcestershire. As a boy I once marked a green woodpecker into one of the round holes we see quite newly cut by the bird in an oak; getting a butterfly net I clapped it over the hole, caught the bird, took it home and placed it in a wicker cage. Then, returning to the tree with a chisel and mallet, I cut a hole about a foot below the entrance to the nest, only to find young birds instead of the eggs for which I had hoped. I went home to see how my captive was getting on; she was gone, and her method of escape was plain, one or two of the wicker bars being neatly cut through. I had forgotten the power of "stocking" of a "stock-eagle," for that is the meaning of the prefix in the name.
The laughing cry of the green woodpecker, or "yaffle," as the bird is by onomatopoeia called in some parts, is regarded as a sign of rain. I doubt whether it should be always so interpreted, for I know it is sometimes a sign of distress or call for help, having heard it from one in full flight from a pursuing hawk. Other curious local names of birds in Worcestershire are "Blue Isaac" for hedge sparrow, "mumruffin" for long-tailed tit, "maggot" for magpie, and the heron is always called "bittern" (really quite a distinct bird). There are innumerable rhymes as to the signification of numbers where magpies are concerned, but the most complete I have heard runs thus:
"One's joy, two's grief,
Three's marriage, four's death,
Five's heaven, six is hell,
Seven's the devil his own sel'."
Other rhymes make "one" an unlucky number, and there are many people in Worcestershire who never see a solitary magpie without touching their hats to avert the omen, and convert it to one of good-luck; as a man once said to me, "It is as well not to lose a chance."
The kingfisher, I suppose the most beautiful of British birds, was, with all my brooks, a common bird at Aldington. Its steady flight, following the course of a stream, and its brilliant colouring make it very conspicuous, its turquoise blue varying to dark green, and its orange breast flashing in the sun. I found a nest in a water-rat's old hole, with six very transparent white eggs, deriving a rosy tint from the yolk, almost visible, within the shell. The hole had an entrance above the bank, descended vertically, turned at a right angle where the nest, merely a layer of small fish-bones, was placed, and ended horizontally on the side of the bank. I once saw six young kingfishers sitting side by side on a dead branch, close together, evidently just out of the nest. And I was fortunate in seeing a kingfisher dart upon the water, hover for an instant like a hawk-moth over honeysuckle, and, having caught a small gudgeon, fly away with it in its beak. They, like the martin, always perch on leafless wood, so that the leaves shall not impede their flight when pouncing upon a fish, and no doubt this is the reason they sometimes perch on the top joint of the rod of a hidden fisherman.
The nuthatch, called here the "mud-dauber," from its habit of narrowing the hole of a starling's old nest, with mud, for its own use as a nesting-place, is a more common bird in the Forest than in Worcestershire. It is a provident bird, firmly wedging hazel nuts in the autumn into crevices of the Scots-fir, for a winter store, Bewick mentions that it uses these crevices as vices, to hold the nut securely, while it cracks it; but he does not recognize the fact that they have been stored long previously. I have seen a great number of nuts so stored and quite sound.
Bewick, by the way, who wrote his History of British Birds in 1797, presents in one of his inimitable "tailpiece" wood-cuts a prevision of the aeroplane. The picture shows the airman seated in a winged car, guiding with reins thirteen harnessed herons as the motive power, and mounting upwards, apparently very near the moon. If he can see the modern interpretation of his dream he must be pleasantly surprised. Bewick's woodcock is one of the most beautiful portraits in the book: the accurate detail of the feather markings of the wings and back and the softer tone of the breast are as nearly perfection as possible. A woodcock visited Aldington in one of the very severe winters but managed to elude all pursuers. It has been said, and also contradicted, that the woodcock when rising from the ground uses its long bill as a lever to assist its starting, just as an oarsman pushes off from the bank with a boat-hook or oar; I myself have seen one rising from a bare and marshy place, and the position of its bill certainly gave me the impression that the idea was well founded.