Beautiful Birds

by Edmund Selous

THE WHITE EGRET

Oh, yes, he is quite a beautiful bird, is the White Egret; and now I will describe him to you. I shall not have any colours to tell you about, because he is all white—which of course you will have guessed from his name—but you know how beautiful white can be. You will not have forgotten the little Humming-bird who was made still more beautiful than he had been before, by three snowflakes falling upon him. But, with this bird, it is as if the snow had fallen all over him and covered him up, for he is white all over, a beautiful, soft, silky white, as pure and delicate as the snow itself. Only his shape, perhaps, is a little funny—at least you might think so—for he has a pair of long, thin, stilty legs, and a long, thin, snaky neck, and a long, sharp, pointed beak, so that all three of these together make him a tall, thin, stilty bird. “Something like a stork, that is,” you will say, for you will have seen pictures of storks, even if you have not seen one alive in the Zoological Gardens—which is a very bad place for him, I think. Well, this bird is something like a stork, but he is a great deal more like a heron, that long-legged, long-necked bird that stands for hours in the water, waiting for a fish to come near it, so that it may catch it and swallow it; for the heron, you know, lives on fish and frogs, and things of that sort.

Yes, he is very like a heron, and, do you know, there is a very good reason for that, because the White Egret is a heron. Some birds, I must tell you, have names which are like our surnames, and show the family they belong to. As long as you only know a boy's or girl's Christian name—Reginald or Bertram or Dorothy or Norah or Wilhelmina—you don't know a bit what family they belong to; but as soon as you know their surnames—Smith or Brown or Jones or Thompson or Robinson—why then you do—and it is just the same with birds. Heron is really a surname, only the bird that has it, here in England, has not a Christian name as well—unless “common” is one, for he is called the Common Heron. But White Egret is a Christian name and the surname to it is Heron—for the White Egret belongs to the Heron family. That is why he is so tall and gaunt and stilty, for a heron is always like that—it is the family figure—and so now, when I tell you that he stands in the water and catches fish, you will know why he does that, too; fish is the family dish, and no heron would think of going without it, for long.

But now, let me tell you about those beautiful feathers which the poor White Egret has. They grow only on his back—about the middle of it—and droop down to a little way over his tail, so that they are a foot or more long. You remember what I explained to you about the feathers in the tail of the Lyre-bird, and those that make the plumes in the beautiful Birds of Paradise—how the barbs of the feather on each side of the quill have no barbules to hold them together, so that they fall apart and wave about like beautiful, soft, silky threads. If you have forgotten, then you must look back for it, because I should not explain it better here than I do there, and, besides, it would be twice over. Well, these feathers are made in the same way, only they are of a pure, shining white—like all the rest of this birds plumage—and although they are as soft as silk they are stiff at the same time, and so smooth that they look like the delicate flakings from a piece of beautiful, pure, polished ivory. Imagine a little fountain of ivory threads all shooting up together into the air, quite straight at first, and then bending over and drooping down in the most delicate, graceful way imaginable. That is what a plume of those feathers looks like, when they have been taken out and tied together, but I wish, myself, that they did not look nearly so beautiful, for it is because of those beautiful plumes, that the poor bird is being killed and killed and becoming scarcer and scarcer, every day. For the women whose hearts the little demon has frozen, wear these plumes in their hats and in their hair, and they are called “ospreys,” and are very fashionable indeed.

Soldiers, too, used to wear them in their caps, but they have given up doing so. It is only the frozen-hearted women who are killing the poor White Egrets now—but ah, there are so many of them (the women I mean, not the Egrets). I have sat at the entrance of a large concert-hall, and counted the faces that had these lovely egret-plumes—these beautiful, fashionable “ospreys,” so white and yet so blood-stained—nodding above them—counted them as they came in and as they went out, young faces, old faces, soft faces, hard faces, shrivelled faces, puckered faces, painted faces, plain faces, ugly faces, quite dreadful faces—ah, what numbers of them there were! It was quite difficult to count them all. Every now and again there would be a pretty face, and I used to count those separately—one—two—three—four—five—sometimes up to half-a-dozen. That was not so tiring, but, you see, I had to count them all.

Oh, wise but wicked little demon, who blew his bad powders into the hearts of all the women! There were two kinds, you know, and one of them was “Vanity.” Now if it had been a man—however wicked a one—I feel sure that he would have looked about for the women with the pretty faces, and who were rather young, to blow that powder into. But the little demon was wiser, in his own wicked way. He did not go about, looking and looking. He blew it into all their hearts, and that gave him no trouble at all.

Now, I must tell you that there are two different kinds of White Egrets, with these beautiful feathers that the women with the frozen hearts wear. One is much larger than the other, and is called the Great White Egret. He is quite a big bird, larger even than our common heron—and you know what a big bird he is. The other one, which is called the Small White Egret, is not more than half the size of the great one, but his feathers are the most beautiful, so that, though he has not nearly so many of them, he is worth nearly twice as much money. That means, of course, that the servants of the wicked little demon, who shoot him and sell his feathers, can get nearly twice as much money for them as they can for the feathers of the other one. So, of course, they like shooting him best, but they are very glad to shoot the other one—the Great White Egret—too, for even his feathers are worth a good deal. Now, if the wicked little demon had not frozen the hearts of women, they would never want to wear feathers that cost the lives of the poor birds to whom they belong—because, you know, women are, really, so kind. Then, of course, those feathers that are so beautiful would not be worth anything (as it is called), and so men would not shoot the White Egrets, because they would not be able to sell their feathers. I am afraid they would have no better reason for not doing so than that, because men, you know, are not kind and pitiful—as women are, if only their hearts are not frozen. But, at any rate, the White Egrets would be left alive.

And you must not think that their feathers would really not be worth anything, then. When we talk of a thing not being worth anything, what we really mean is that we cannot sell it for money. Now what are things that you cannot sell for money? I will tell you three. There is the sky, and the air, and the sunlight. You cannot buy or sell them, but do you think they are not worth anything! I think they are worth a good deal. Then there is a good temper; nobody can buy that, but yet what a lot it is worth! Now if the beautiful feathers of the White Egret could not be sold, because the world was better and there were no frozen-hearted women to buy them, yet they would be worth something, although it would not be money. They would be worth love and pity and sympathy and interest and real admiration (which never wants to kill), for all those things would be given to the beautiful bird with its beautiful feathers, and it would be just because of those things that no one would think of killing him. His feathers, then, would be like the smiles on a face. You cannot take those out of the face, and put them in a hat. If you could, then some one would soon say to you: “Will you part with a few of your smiles? They are fashionable in hats just now; I will give you, for a nice, bright one—let me see—half-a-crown.” Then you might say that a nice, bright smile was worth half-a-crown. But I think it is worth much more where it is, in your face, though you cannot take it out and get half-a-crown for it.