IN FARM AND GARDEN.
One of the greatest charms about bird-life of the farm and garden is its great variety. Any person who cares to go the right way to work can acquire a very fair ornithological education in such places, a large percentage of our best-known birds being found in them at one time of the year or another. It was our good fortune for a great many years to ornithologize upon several hundreds of acres of farm land of the most diversified character; whilst an additional advantage was the fact that we had to contend with no high-farming, the greater portion of it being worked on the good old slovenly plan—weedy corners, long stubbles, uncut hedges, and general untidiness—so attractive to birds. Almost every possible description of cover could be found. We had high ground, sheltered valleys, wooded bottoms, plenty of timber in field and hedgerow, trout streams and sunk fences, patches of bog, and great thickets of briar and bramble in unused corners; large stackyards, plenty of old sheds and buildings, some of them covered with ivy, and an abundance of evergreens round about the homesteads, which were in some cases surrounded by orchards and old-fashioned gardens. We have only to add that large woods adjoined here and there, together with smaller plantations and shrubberies in some of which rookeries were established, and also that gamekeepers were absent and much of the surrounding property was unpreserved as regards game, to complete the brief description of an ideal haunt for wild birds. Unfortunately we lived long enough near this avine paradise to see much of it destroyed, turned over to the builder, and bird-life banished. Those who remember the quaint old village of Heeley (now, alas! a suburb of Sheffield) in the days before the railway, when the mail-coach passed through twice a day and caused the only commotion, when the old flour-mill driven by water, with its tree-surrounded dam, stood where the railway-station does now, may perhaps recall the matchless sylvan beauty of Meersbrook, the Banks, and the old hall at Norton Lees. Much of it now has been transformed into a wilderness of bricks and mortar. There are many other similar spots about the northern shires in which the annual cycle of bird-life is much the same—at least we have found it so—and in the present chapter we propose to outline some of its most salient features.
Perhaps the most familiar birds of the open fields, especially in spring, are the Rooks. They may be found on every kind of field in turn. They visit the grass-lands, especially when manure is being spread; they are constant companions of the ploughman’s team, and search furrow after furrow as the bright share turns over the brown earth; whilst all the newly-sown patches are sought for any seed that may chance to be within reach. In seed-time Rooks are certainly troublesome, and usually one or two of the marauders have to be shot and hung up from stakes on the scene of their misdeeds as a warning to the rest before the pilfering ceases. And yet happy is the farmer that has a rookery within easy distance of his land. The birds will increase its value and fertility by ridding pasture and arable land of countless insect pests, and for nine or ten months out of the twelve wage a never-ending war upon the real enemies of his crops. Many farmers we have known will admit that the Rook is of service; others have been converted into staunch friends of the bird after we have satisfied them by ocular demonstration of the number of wire-worms a healthy hearty Rook will devour in the course of a morning. Very beautiful these birds look in their purple-black plumage, almost as polished as bright steel, in the sunlight as they walk about the ploughed fields and pastures. And then their home in the cluster of elm-trees yonder is a place fraught with interest if full of noise. Towards the close of February, or, if the weather be still inclement, not until the beginning of March, and at least a fortnight or three weeks later than in Devonshire, the Rooks begin to tidy up their big nests in the slender branches at the tree-tops. Others, less fortunate, commence to build entirely new nests. But this building is by no means universal for a week or more; the mania for collecting sticks and turf has not yet spread through the entire colony, and numbers of birds may be seen looking on with indifference at the efforts of more industrious neighbours. What a noisy animated scene the old rookery is for the next month, until the eggs are laid in the big massive nests; then there is comparative quietness until the young are hatched, when the noisy clamour begins again with greater volume until nestlings and parents get on to the adjoining fields. They return in many cases to the nest-trees to roost, and then each evening the din is deafening as troop after troop of tired birds come straggling in from all directions and caw themselves hoarse before dropping off to sleep in the tall trees.
The Rook.
Another familiar bird of the farm is the Starling—a species that does not reveal its beauty unless examined minutely. There are few birds in this country more gorgeously arrayed with metallic sheen than a fine old cock Starling in the full flush and vigour of spring plumage. His lemon-yellow bill at this season also increases the effect. As harmless as it is useful, it keeps close company with the Rooks, although it shows little inclination to follow those birds on to the arable land; it loves the grass fields and manure heaps, being somewhat of an unclean feeder. Then it always selects a covered site of some kind for nesting purposes, being most adaptive in this respect. We used to place boxes for its accommodation in the trees; and we have known a disused pigeon-cot fastened to a high wall packed to its utmost capacity with nests. Few birds are more attached to their breeding-place. For many years a pair of Starlings bred in a hole in a tall elm-tree in one of the fields. From this nest we actually obtained forty eggs in a season, and sometimes for a couple of years in succession the birds did not succeed in raising a brood. Every summer the Starlings of the entire district gathered into one or two large flocks, and these came evening by evening to roost in a cluster of white-thorns until the late autumn, when they changed their quarters to the evergreens close by. Another thing that endears the Starling to us is its perennial song. Few other song-birds make so much fuss over their music as the Starling. Action of some kind seems always essential to vocal effort; and the way he erects almost every feather, or sways about or stands in some grotesque attitude, during his periods of song is most entertaining. The House Sparrow is another familiar bird of the farm and garden. Unfortunately he is far too common for most farmers, especially in the vicinity of large towns and villages; and the way these pilfering birds will thresh out a field of wheat or oats is literally surprising. Friends of the Sparrow, usually utterly ignorant of its habits and the serious mischief it can do, cannot understand the farmers' indignation, and are always protesting against its wanton slaughter. But then there is reason in all things, and in grain-growing districts the bird should be kept down. The boy with his clappers amongst the corn may, if he conscientiously sticks to his work (and this rarely happens), keep the vast flocks of Sparrows on the move, but the birds will gorge themselves with grain meantime; whilst shooting round the fields is little more effective, for the feathered thieves soon desert the hedge-sides and settle in the centre of the crops, where it is next to impossible to dislodge them, or to alarm them by repeated discharges of the gun. The Sparrow nuisance is philosophically endured by many farmers, and regarded, like the weather, as beyond their control. In some cases we have known farmers absolutely cease growing corn at all because the birds take such a large proportion of the crop! Here the usefulness of the Sparrow-hawk becomes only too apparent, but the keepers shoot that bird down—every one they can reach—and the Sparrows have things all their own way.
The Brambling.