Bird Life Glimpses

by Edmund Selous

Personally, I do not share in the panic, and if the green woodpecker should disappear from this island—as, indeed, it may—the starling, I am confident, will have had but little to do with it. The result, as I believe, of the present friction between the two birds, will be of a more interesting and less painful character. For say that a woodpecker be deprived of its first nest, or tunnel, it will assuredly excavate another one. Not, however, immediately: it is likely, I think, that there would be an interval of some days—perhaps a week, or longer—and, by this time, a vast number of starlings would have laid their eggs. Consequently, the dispossessed woodpecker would have a far better chance of laying and hatching out his, this second time, and a better one still, were he forced to make a third attempt. No doubt, a starling wishing to rear a second brood would be glad to misappropriate another domicile, but, as the woodpecker would be now established, either with eggs or young, it would probably—I should think, myself, certainly—be unable to do so, but would have to suit itself elsewhere. The woodpecker should, therefore, have reared its first brood some time before the starling had finished with its second, and so would have time to lay again, if this, which I doubt, is its habit. Thus, after the first retardation in the laying of the one species, consequent upon the action of the other, the two would not be likely again to come into collision; nor would the woodpecker be seriously injured by being forced, in this way, to become a later-breeding bird. As long as there are a sufficient number of partially-decayed trees for both starlings and woodpeckers—and any hole or hollow does for the former—I can see no reason why the latter should suffer, except, indeed, in his feelings; and even if a time were to come when this were no longer the case, why should he not, like the La Plata species, still further modify his habits, even to the extent, if necessary, of laying in a rabbit burrow? Love, I feel confident, would “find out a way.”

INDIGNANT!
Starling in possession of Woodpecker’s Nesting Hole

But there is another possibility. May not either the woodpecker or the starling be a cuckoo in posse? If one waits and watches, one may see first the one bird, and then the other, enter the hole, in each other’s absence, and it is only when the woodpecker finds the starling in possession—and this, as I am inclined to think, more than once—that he desists and retires. Now, the woodpecker having made its nest, is, we may suppose, ready to lay, and, if it were to do so, it is at least possible that the starling might, in some cases, hatch the egg. True, the latter would still have his nest, or a part of it, to make, but it is of loose material—straw for the most part—and the cow-bird of America has, I believe, been sometimes brought into existence under similar circumstances. Some woodpeckers, too—evolution, it must be remembered, works largely through exceptions—might be sufficiently persistent to lay an egg in the completed nest of the starling. In this latter case, at any rate, it seems more than likely that the original parasite would become the dupe of his ousted victim, “and thus the whirligig of time” would have “brought in his revenges.”

Whether in speculating upon the various possible origins of the parasitic instinct, as exhibited in perfection by the cuckoo, this one has ever been considered, I do not know, but it does not appear to me to be in itself improbable. It is not difficult to understand a bird seizing another one’s nest, first as a mere site for, and then, gradually, as its own. That the dispossessed bird should still strive to lay in its own appropriated nest, and, often, succeed in doing so, is also easy to imagine; and if this should be its only, or most usual, solution of the difficulty, it would lose, through disuse, the instinct of incubation, and become a cuckoo malgré lui. All feeling of property would, by this time, be gone; the parasitic instinct would be strongly developed, and that it should now be indulged, at the expense of many, or several, species instead of only one—once the robber, but whose original theft would be no longer traceable—is a sequel that one might expect. In a process like this there would have been no very abrupt or violent departure, on the part of either species—of the dupe or of the parasite—from their original habits. All would have been gradual, and naturally brought about. Therefore, as it appears to me, all might very well have taken place. Let me add to these speculations one curious fact in regard to the two birds whose inter-relations have suggested them, which extremely close observation has enabled me to elicit. I have noticed that a woodpecker which has abandoned its hole, always lays claim to magnanimity, as the motive for such abandonment, whereas the starling as invariably attributes it to weakness. I have not yet decided which is right.

But the starling may be regarded in a nobler light than that of a parasitical appropriator, or even a mere finder of, dwellings. He is, and that to a very considerable extent, a builder of them, too. I have some reason to think that he is occasionally, so to speak, his own woodpecker, for I have seen him bringing, through an extremely rough and irregular aperture, in a quite decayed tree, one little beakful of chips after another, whilst his mate sat singing on the stump of the same branch, just above him. The chips thus brought were dropped on the ground, and had all the appearance of having been picked and pulled out of the mass of the tree. Possibly, therefore, the aperture had been made in the same way.

It is in gravel-or sand-pits, however, that the bird’s greatest architectural triumphs are achieved. Starlings often form colonies here, together with sand-martins, and the holes, or, rather, caverns, which they make are so large as to excite wonder. A rabbit—nay, two—might sit in some of them; two would be a squeeze, indeed, but one would find it roomy and comfortable. The stock-dove certainly does, for she often builds in them, as she does in the burrows of rabbits, and can no more be supposed to make the one than the other. Besides, I have seen the starlings at work in their vaults, and the latter growing from day to day. But no, I am stating, or implying, a little too much. Properly, satisfactorily at work I have not seen them, though I have tried to; I have been unfortunate in this respect. But there were the holes, and there were the starlings always in and about them, and, sometimes, hanging on the face of the sand-pit, like the sand-martins themselves. That the latter had had anything to do with these great, rounded caves, or that the starlings had merely seized on the last year’s martin-holes, and enlarged them, I do not believe. That may be so in some cases, but here, as it seems to me, it would have been impossible. Sand-martins, as is well known, drive their little narrow tunnels, for an immense way, into the cliff—nine feet sometimes, it is said, but this seems rather startling. Large and roomy and cavernous as are the chambers of the starlings, yet they are not quite so penetrating, so bowelly, as this. Therefore—and this would especially apply in the earlier stages of their construction—the original martin-holes ought always to be found piercing their backward wall, if the starlings had merely widened the shaft for themselves. This, however, has not been the case in the excavations which I have seen, even when they were mere shallow alcoves in the wall of the cliff—but just commenced, in fact. Moreover, some of these starling-burrows were several feet apart, the cliff between them being unexcavated. Sand-martins, however, drive their tunnels close together, and in a long irregular line, or series of lines, so that if, in these instances, starlings had seized upon them, there ought to have been many small holes in the interstices between the large ones. Lastly, if a starling can do such a prodigious amount of excavation for himself, why should he be beholden to a sand-martin, or any other bird, for a beginning or any part of it? That he will, sometimes, commence at a martin’s hole, just as he might at any other inequality of the surface—as where a stone has dropped out—and, so, widen a chink into a cavern, a fine, roomy apartment (as Shakespeare ennobled inferior productions, which was not plagiarism), I am not denying, nor that he might enjoy work, all the more, when combined with spoliation. But, with or without this, the starling appears to me to be an architect of considerable eminence, and, as such, not to have received any adequate recognition.

To return to these wonderful sand-caves—his own work—it seems curious, at first, considering their size, how he can get them so rounded in shape. Here there is no question of turning about, in a heap of things soft and yielding, pressing with the breast, to all sides, moulding, as it were, the materials, like clay upon the potter’s wheel—the way in which most nests are made cup-shaped; but we have a large, airy, beehive-like chamber, somewhat resembling the interior of a Kaffir hut, except that the floor is not flat, but more like a reversed and shallower dome. The entrance, too, is small, compared to the size of the interior, in something like the same proportion. Here, on the outside, where the birds have clung, the sand looks scratched, as with their claws, or, sometimes, as though chiselled with their beaks; but within, the walls and rounded dome have a smooth and swept appearance, almost as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper. Sometimes I have wondered if the starlings scoured, so to speak, or fretted the inside of their caverns, by rapidly vibrating their wings against them, so as to act like a stiff brush on the soft, friable sandstone. One of my notings, when watching in the sand-pits, was this: “A starling appears, now, at the mouth of a hole, waving his wings most vigorously. Then disappearing into it, again, he quickly returns, still waving them, and moves, so, along the face of the cliff, for there is something like a little ledge below the row of holes.” This bird, indeed, waved its wings so long and so vigorously that I began to think it must have a special and peculiar fondness for so doing—that here was an exaggeration, in a single individual, of a habit common to the species, for starlings during the nesting season are great performers in this way. But if the wings were used as suggested, they would certainly, I think, be sufficiently strong, and their quill-feathers sufficiently stiff, to fret away the sand; and as their sweeps would be in curves, this would help to explain the domed and rounded shape of these bird cave-dwellings. Only, why have I not seen them doing it? Though many of the holes were unfinished—some only just begun—and though the birds were constantly in them, I could never plainly see any actual excavation being done by them, except that, sometimes, one, in a perfunctory sort of manner, would carry some nodules of sand or gravel out of a hole that seemed nearly finished; yet still they grew and grew. The thing, in fact, is something of a mystery to me.

It is easier to see how, when the chambers are completed, the starlings build their nests in them; and, especially, the fact of their entering and plundering each other’s is open and apparent. They seem to chance the rightful owner being at home, or in the near neighbourhood. There is no stealth, no guilty shame-faced approach. Boldly and joyously they fly up, and if unopposed, “so,” as Falstaff says (using the little word as the Germans do now); if not, a quick wheel, a gay retreat, and a song sung at the end of it. Such happy high-handedness, careless guilt! A bird, issuing from a cave that is not his own, is flown after and pecked by another, just as he plunges into one that is. The thief soon reappears at the door of his premises, and sings, or talks, a song, and the robbed bird is, by this time, sing-talking too. Both are happy—immer munter—all is enjoyment. A bird, returning with plunder, finds the absent proprietor in his own home. Each scolds, each recognises that he has “received the dor”; but neither blushes, neither is one bit ashamed. Happy birdies! They fly about, sinning and not caring, persist in ill courses, and how they enjoy themselves! There is no trouble of conscience, no remorse. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” with them. It is topsy-turvyland, a kind of right wrong-doing, and things go on capitally. Happy birdies! What a bore all morality seems, as one watches them. How tiresome it is to be human and high in the scale! Those who would shake off the cobwebs—who are tired of teachings and preachings and heavy-high novellings, who would see things anew, and not mattering, rubbing their eyes and forgetting their dignities, missions, destinies, virtues, and the rest of it—let them come and watch a colony of starlings at work in a gravel-pit.

But starlings are most interesting when they flock, each night, to their accustomed roosting-place; in autumn, more especially, when their numbers are greatest. It is difficult to say, exactly, when the more commonplace instincts and emotions, which have animated the birds throughout the day, begin to pass into that strange excitement which heralds and pervades the home-flying. Comparatively early, however, in the afternoon many may be seen sitting in trees—especially orchard trees—and singing in a very full-throated manner. They are not eating the fruit; a dead and fruitless tree holds as many, in proportion to its size, as any of the other ones. Presently a compact flock comes down in an adjacent meadow, and the birds composing it are continually joined by many of the singing ones. Whilst watching them, other flocks begin to sweep by on hurrying pinions, and one notices that many of the high elm trees, into which they wheel, are already stocked with birds, whilst the air begins, gradually, to fill with a vague, babbling susurrus, that, blending with the stillness or with each accustomed sound, is perceived before it is heard—a felt atmosphere of song. One by one, or mingling with one another, these flocks leave the trees, and fly on towards the wood of their rest; but by that principle which impels some of any number, however great, to join any other great number, many detach themselves from the main stream of advance, and fly to the ever-increasing multitudes which still wheel, or walk, over the fields. It seems strange that these latter should, hitherto, have resisted that general movement which has robed each tree with life, and made a music of the air; but all at once, with a whirring hurricane of wings, they rise like brown spray of the earth, and, mounting above one of the highest elms, come sweeping suddenly down upon it, in the most violent and erratic manner, whizzing and zigzagging about from side to side, as they descend, and making a loud rushing sound with the wings, which, as with rooks, who do the same thing, is only heard on such occasions. They do not stay long, and as all the flocks keep moving onwards, the immediate fields and trees are soon empty of birds. To follow their movements farther, one must proceed with all haste towards the roosting-place. About a mile’s distance from it, at the tail of a little village, there is a certain meadow, emerald-green and dotted all over with unusually fine tall elms. In these, their accustomed last halting-place, the starlings, now in vast numbers, are swarming and gathering in a much more remarkable manner than has hitherto been the case. It is, always, on the top of the tree that they settle, and, the instant they do so, it becomes suddenly brown, whilst there bursts from it, as though from some great natural musical box, a mighty volume of sound that is like the plash of waters mingled with a sharper, steelier note—the dropping of innumerable needles on a marble floor. On a sudden the sing-song ceases, and there is a great roar of wings, as the entire host swarm out from the tree, make a wheel or half-wheel or two, close about it, and then, as though unable to go farther, seem drawn back into it, again, by some strong, attractive force. Or they will fly from one tree to another of a group, swarming into each, and presenting, as they cluster in myriads about it, before settling, more the appearance of a vast swarm of bees, or some other insects, than of birds. These flights out from the trees, always very sudden, seem, sometimes, to be absolutely instantaneous; whilst in every case it is obvious that vast numbers must move in the same twinkle of time, as though they were threaded together.