The stone-curlew is an especial feature of the country hereabout—indeed its most distinctive one, ornithologically speaking. It begins to arrive in April and stays till October, by the end of which month it has, usually, left us, all but a few stragglers which I have, sometimes, seen flying high in February—how sadly their cry has fallen, then, and yet how welcome it was! I am always glad when the voice of these birds begins to be heard, again, over the warrens. One can never tire of it—at least, I never can. With Jacques I say, always, “More, more, I prythee, more,” and I can suck its melancholy—for it is a sad note enough—“as a weasel does eggs.” There are several variants of the cry, which seems to differ according to the circumstances under which it is uttered. The “dew-leep, dew-leep”—thin, shrill, and with a plaintive wail in it—comes oftenest from a bird standing by itself, and it is astonishing for what a length of time he will utter it, unencouraged by any response. He does not embellish the remark with any appropriate action or gesture, but just stands, or sits, and makes it. That is enough for him. “It is his duty and he will.” But the full cry, or clamour, as it is called, proceeds, usually, from several birds together, as they come down over the warrens. That is a beautiful thing to hear—so wild and striking—and the spread solitudes amidst which it is uttered seem always to live in it. I have seen two birds running, and thus lifting up their voices, almost abreast, with another one either just in front of or just behind them, the three looking, for all the world, like three trumpeters on the field of battle—for they carry their heads well raised, and have a wild look of martial devotion. But it is more the wailing sounds of the bagpipes than the blast of the trumpet.
“Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,
Pibroch of Donuil,
Wake thy wild voice anew,
Summon Clan-Conuil.”
And the wails grow and swell from one group to another, and all come running down as though it were the gathering of the clans.
Then there is a note like “tur-li-vee, tur-li-vee, tur-li-vee,” quickly repeated—sometimes very quickly, when it sounds more like “ker-vic, ker-vic, ker-vic”—and for such a length of time that it seems as though it would never leave off. All these notes, though differing, have the same general quality of sound, the same complaining wail in them, but one there is which is altogether different, and which I have only heard in the autumn, when the birds were flying in numbers, preparatory to migration. Though plaintive, it has not that drear character of the others; a whistling note it is, with a tremulous rise and fall in it—“tir-whi-whi-whi-whi-whi”—very pleasant to hear, and bringing the sea and seashore to one’s memory. It bears a resemblance—a striking one, it has sometimes seemed to me—to the long, piping cry of the oyster-catcher, but is very much softer. I have heard this note uttered by a bird that a hawk was closely pursuing, but also on other occasions, so that it is not, specially, a cry of distress. The hawk in question, as I remember, was a sparrow-hawk, and therefore not as big as the stone-curlew. The two were close together when I first saw them—almost touching, in fact—the hawk spread like a fan over the stone-curlew, following every deviation of its flight—upwards, downwards, to one or another side—sometimes falling a little behind, but not as much as to leave a space—the two were always overlapping. I can hardly say why—perhaps it was the easy, parachute-like flight of the hawk, with nothing like a swoop or pounce, and the bright, clear sunshine diffusing a joy over everything—but somehow the whole thing did not impress me as being in earnest, but, rather, as a sport or play—on the part of the hawk more particularly; and, strange as this theory may appear, it is, perhaps, somewhat in support of it, that, a few mornings afterwards, I saw a kestrel, first flying with a flock of peewits, and then with one alone. I could not detect any fear of the hawk in the peewits, and it is difficult to suppose—knowing the kestrel’s habits—that he seriously meditated an attack on one of them. In the same way—or what seemed to be the same way—I have seen a hooded crow flying with peewits,[14] and a wood-pigeon with starlings: to the latter case I have already alluded. The stone-curlew in the above instance, though separated, for a time, by the hawk, as I suppose, was one of a great flock, amounting, in all, to nearly three hundred, which used to fly up every morning over the moor, where I have often waited to see them. Lying pressed amidst heather and bracken, I once had the band fly right over me, at but a few feet above the ground, so that, when I looked up, I seemed to raise my head into a cloud of birds. A charming and indescribable sensation it was, to be thus suddenly surrounded by these free, fluttering creatures. They were all about me—and so near. The delicate “whish, whish” of their wings was in my ears, and in my spirit too. I seemed in flight myself, and felt how free and how glorious bird life must be.
Almost as interesting is it to see the stone-curlews fly back to their gathering-grounds, in the very early mornings, after feeding over the country, during the night. They come either singly or in twos and threes—grey, wavering shadows on the first grey of the dawn. Sometimes there will be a wail from a flying bird, and sometimes the sharper ground-note comes thrilling out of the darkness—from which I judge that some run home—but silence is the rule. By the very earliest twilight of the morning, when the moon, if visible, is yet luminous, and the stars shining brightly, the Heimkehr is over, and now, till the evening, the birds will be gathered together on their various assembly-grounds. With the evening come the dances, which I have elsewhere described,[15] and then off they fly, again, to feed, not now in silence, but with wail on wail as they go. Such, at least as far as I have been able to observe, are the autumn habits of these birds. In the spring they are far more active during the daytime. Di-nocturnal I would call the stone-curlew—that is to say, equally at home, as occasion serves, either by day or night. Nothing is pleasanter than to see them running over the sand, with their little, precise, stilty steps. Sometimes one will crouch flat down, with its head stretched straight in front of it, and then one has the Sahara—a desert scene. This habit, however, does not appear to me to be so common in the grown bird—in the young one, no doubt, it is much more strongly developed.
The migration of the stone-curlew begins early in October, but it is not till the end of that month that all the birds are gone. About half or two-thirds of the flock go first, in my experience, and are followed by other battalions, at intervals of a few days. A few stay on late into the month, but every day there are less, and with October, as a rule, all are gone.
A “Murmuration” of Starlings
CHAPTER VI
Starlings are not birds to make part of an olla podrida merely—as in my last chapter—so I shall devote this one to them, more or less entirely. I will begin with a defence of the bird, in regard to his relations with the green woodpecker. Not, indeed, that he can be acquitted on the main charge brought against him, viz. that he appropriates to himself the woodpecker’s nest. This he certainly does do, and his conduct in so doing has aroused a good deal of indignation, not always, perhaps, of the most righteous kind. The compassionate oologist, more especially, who may have found only starling’s eggs where he thought to find woodpecker’s, cannot speak patiently on the subject. His feelings run away with him, in face of such an injustice. The woodpecker is being wronged—by the starling; it will be exterminated—all through the starling. It makes his blood boil. To console himself he looks through his fine collection, which contains not only woodpecker’s eggs—say a roomful—but woodpeckers themselves—in the fluff.[16] It is something—balm in Gilead—yet had it not been for the starling there might have been more.