When one of a pair of long-tailed tits enters the nest, he first pays attention to that part of it which is exactly opposite to him, as he does so. This he raises with his beak, and, also, by pushing with his head and breast. He then, often, disappears in the depths of the cup, and you see the sides of it swell out, now in one place and now in another, as he butts and rams at them, which he does not only with his head, but by kicking with his legs, behind him. Then he turns round, the long tail appearing where the head has lately been, whilst the head emerges, projecting over the rim in exactly the same place as where he entered, but looking, now, outwards. This part he now pushes down with his chin, just as he raised the other with his head and beak, and having done this, he comes out. But often, sitting in the nest as he entered it, he turns his head right round, on one side or another, examining and manipulating the edges; and sometimes, bending it down over the rim, he presses or arranges a lichen, on the outside. This, however, he does more rarely than one would think, his best attention being given to the interior. Sometimes, too, he flutters his wings in the nest, as though to aid in the moulding of it. There is one extraordinary power which these tits possess, which is that of turning their bodies quite round in the nest, whilst keeping the tail motionless, and in exactly the same place all the time. I have often seen—or seemed to see—them do this, but as the tail sticks upright, and is—till the cup gets too deep—a very conspicuous object, it would not be easy to be mistaken. How they do it I know not—they are little contortionists—but I have often noticed how loosely and flexibly the long tail feathers of these birds seem just stuck into the body. There is another thing that I have seen them do, viz. turn the head entirely round without any part of the body seeming to share in the movement; but here, I think, there must have been some hocus-pocus.
I have spoken of these tits having but one way of entering and leaving the nest, even when all ways lie open to them: but, more than this, they have one set path, by which they approach and retire from it. You first notice this when one of the birds passes, inadvertently, on the wrong side of some twig or bough, which makes a conspicuous feature in its accustomed path. The eye is caught by the novelty, and you realise, then, that it is one. This happens but rarely, and, when it does, it has sometimes struck me that the bird feels a little confused, or not quite easy, in consequence. It has such a feeling, I feel sure, which, though slight, yet just marks its consciousness of having deviated from a routine. Possibly the feeling is stronger than I am imagining, for on one occasion, at least, I have seen a bird that had got the wrong side of a twig palisade, so to speak, in approaching its nest, turn back and pass it, on the right side. The nest, in this instance also, was in one of those fine, open hedges, made of the branches of the Scotch fir—planted and growing—which are common in this part of Suffolk, and through these there was a regular “approach” to the house, not straight, but in a crescent, as though for a carriage to drive up—the “sweep” of the days of Jane Austen—and the birds always went up and down it like dear little orthodox things as they are. During the later stages of construction, the hole in the side of the nest becomes so small and tight, that even these petite little creatures have, often, to struggle quite violently, in order to force themselves through it; and this, I think, also, is evidence that the door is not due to design—that the bird never has the thought in its mind, “There must be a door to get in and out by.” Instead of that, it keeps getting in and out, and this, of necessity, makes the door. These tits, when building, seem to rest, for a little, in the nest, before leaving it, and sometimes one will sit, for some minutes, quite still, with its head projecting through the aperture, looking like a cleverly-painted miniature in a round frame. At other times the tail projects, and that, though not quite such a picture, has still a charm of its own. Nothing can look prettier than these soft, little pinky, feathery things, as they creep, mousily, into their soft little purse of a nest: nothing can look prettier than they do, as they sit inside it, pulling, pushing, ramming, patting, and arranging: finally, nothing can look prettier than they look, as they again creep out of it, and fly away. It is a joy to watch them building, and their perpetual feat of turning in a way which ought to dislocate their tail, without dislocating it, is an ever-recurring miracle. Charming in and about the nest, they are; charming, too, in the way they approach it. They come up so softly and quietly, creeping from one tree or bush to another, seeming almost to steal through the air. They have a pretty, soft note, too, a low little “chit, chit,” which they utter, at intervals, and which often tells you they are there, before you catch sight of them. To hear that soft chittery note, and then to catch a soft pinkiness, with it, are two very pleasant sensations. Another is to see the one bird working in the nest, and to hear the other chittering in the neighbourhood, whilst it waits for it to come out.
In the absence of both the owners from the nest they were building, I have seen a wren creep very quietly into it, and, after remaining there for a little, creep as quietly out again. He carried nothing away with him, that I could see, so that pillage may not have been his object, though I know not what else it could have been. Perhaps it was simple curiosity, or, again, it may have been but a part of his routine work. Such a nest, with its hole of entrance, may have seemed to him like any other chink or cavity, which he would have been prepared to enter on general principles of investigation. Nests, however, in process of building by one bird, are looked at by others as useful supplies of material for their own—little depôts scattered over the country. I have seen a pair of hedge-sparrows fly straight to a blackbird’s, and then on, with grass in their bills. Another blackbird’s nest, the building of which I was watching, supplied a blue tit with moss, whilst, in the very same tree, a pair of golden-crested wrens had theirs entirely demolished by an unfeeling hen chaffinch.
In my own experience it is the hen chaffinch, alone, that builds the nest, and I have even seen her driving away a cock bird, which I took to be her mate. After putting him to flight, this particular hen made fifteen visits to the nest, at intervals of about ten minutes, bringing something in her beak each time, and worked at it, singly, with great fervour and energy. To the actions which I have been describing in the long-tailed tits—viz. pressing herself down in it, ramming forward with her breast, kicking out with her feet, behind, and so on—actions, I suppose, common to most nest-building birds—she added that one of clasping the rim tightly with her tail, bent strongly down for the purpose, which I have referred to, before, in the blackbird. I could not, however, repeat the comments which I have made when describing it in her case. Whatever may have been the origin of the habit, it has become, in the chaffinch, a mere business-like affair—purely utilitarian, doubtless, in its inception and object. Though upon this and other occasions of the nest-building, the hen chaffinch, alone, has seemed to be the architect, it by no means follows that this is always the case. A process of transition is, as I believe, taking place in this respect with the males of various birds. With the long-tailed tits, for instance, we have just seen how prettily husband and wife can work together; and that they do so in the great majority of instances, I have little doubt. Yet the first time that I ever watched these birds building, it was only one of the pair who did anything; the other—doubtless the male—though he came each time with his mate, never brought anything with him, and did not once enter the nest. He did not even go very near it, but merely stayed about, in the neighbourhood, till the worker came out, on which the two flew off together. This has been exactly the behaviour of the cock blackbird during nidification, in such cases as have fallen under my observation; and here I have been a very close watcher, for hours at a time, and for several days in succession. Yet I have, myself, seen the cock flying off with grass, from a field, whilst Mr. Dewar has seen him fly up with some into the ivy on a wall, where a nest was known to be in construction. The cock nightingale attends the hen, when building, in just the same way that the cock blackbird does, but I have not yet seen him take a part in its construction. Now to take the blackbird—since here we have a clear case of individual difference—is it a process of transition from one state of things to another, that we see, or has the transition been made, and are the exceptional instances due to reversion merely? But then, which are the exceptional instances, or in which direction is the change proceeding? Is the male becoming, or was he once, a builder or a non-builder? For myself, I incline to the transitional view, and inasmuch as the lapse of such a habit as nest-building must be consequent upon a loss of interest in it—which would mean a decay of the instinct—this does not seem to me consistent with the extremely attentive manner in which the cock follows the hen about, and the manifest interest which he takes in all she does. It seems to me more likely, therefore, that he is learning the art than losing it. Still, as an instinct might weaken very gradually, it is impossible to do more than conjecture which way the stream is running, if we look only at a single species. The true way would be to take all the species of the genus to which the one in question belongs, and find out the habits of the majority, in regard to this special point. If both the male and female of the genus Turdidæ help, as a rule, in building the nest, then this, no doubt, was the ancient state of things, and vice versâ.
One might suppose—it would seem likely on a primâ facie view of it—that where the cock bird took no part in the building of the nest, he would take none, either, in incubating the eggs. This is so with the blackbird—at least I have never come upon the male sitting, and whenever I have watched a nest where eggs were being incubated, there has never been any change upon it; the birds, that is to say, have never relieved one another, but the hen, having gone off, has always returned, the nest being empty in the interval. But if the suppression, in the male bird, of these two activities—of nest-building and incubation—are related, by a parity of reasoning one would suppose that he would take no part in the feeding of the young. This, however, with the blackbird, is by no means the case, for the cock is as active, here, and interested as the hen—or nearly so. At least he recognises a duty, and performs it to the best of his ability. It is the same with the wagtail, and, no doubt, with numbers of other birds—a fact which seems to suggest that the instinct of incubation, and that of parental love, are differentiated, the second not making its appearance till after the eggs are hatched. This, at first sight, seems likely, and then—if one considers it a little—unlikely, or, perhaps, impossible. It is from birth that the maternal love, the στοργἡ dates, and birth, here, is represented by the egg. True, there is a second birth when the egg is hatched, which makes it possible that the true στοργἡ has waited for this. Yet the mother continues to brood upon the young in the same way that she has been doing on her eggs, and, except for the feeding, which does not commence immediately, the whole pretty picture looks so much the same that it is difficult to think a new element has been projected into it. No one, whilst the young are still tiny, could tell whether they or the eggs were being brooded over by the parent bird. An interesting point occurs here. When incubation is shared by the two sexes, the hatching of the eggs must frequently, one would think, take place whilst the male bird is sitting. What, then, are his feelings when this happens? By what, if any, instinct is he swayed? If we suppose that the true στοργἡ dates, in the mother’s breast, from the hatching of the egg, and the appearance of the formed young, does, now, a similar feeling take possession of the male? Does he too feel the στοργἡ, seeing that the young have been born from the egg, under his breast? If so, we could understand his subsequent devotion to the young, as shown by his feeding them with the same assiduity as the mother. But what, then, of the mother? She has been away at this second birth, so that if her psychology would have been affected, in any way, by the act—if it can be called an act—of hatching out the eggs, it ought not to be so affected now; she should be less a mother, in fact, than the cock. This, however—unless the eggs always are hatched out under the hen—is contradicted by facts, so that it seems plain that whatever special tie there may be between the female bird, as distinct from the male, and the young, must date from the laying of the eggs. But if this be so—and it seems the plain way of nature—what is it that makes the cock bird incubate? Is he moved by a feeling of the same nature, if weaker, as that which animates the hen, or has he, merely, caught the habit from her? The fact that some male birds leave the whole duty of incubation to the hen, and yet help to feed the young, seems to point in the latter direction, since imitation might well have acted capriciously, whereas one would suppose that feelings analogous, in their nature, in the two sexes, would show themselves at the same time. It would, however, be a stronger evidence for imitation, as the cause of the parental activities of the male, were he to take his part in incubation, but leave the young to the female. I do not know if there is any species of bird, where the cock acts in this way. Perhaps it may be impossible to answer these, or similar, questions, but light might, conceivably, be thrown upon them by a more extensive knowledge of the relative parts played by the male and female bird in nidification, incubation, and the rearing of the young, throughout a large number of species. These, however, are not the questions with which ornithologists busy themselves. By turning to a natural history of British birds, one can always find how many eggs are laid by any species, their coloration—often illustrated by costly plates—and when and where the laying takes place; but in regard to the matters above-mentioned—or, indeed, most other matters—little or no information is forthcoming. One might think that such works were written for the assistance of bird-nesters only, and whether they are or not, that is the end which they, principally, fulfil. I believe, myself, that if the habits—especially the breeding habits—of but one species in every group or genus had been thoroughly studied, so that we knew, not only what it did, but how it did it, the result would make an infinitely more valuable work, even in regard to British birds only, than any now in existence, though all the other species were left out of it, and little or nothing was said about the number of eggs, their coloration, and the time at which they were laid.
If the male bird has only caught the habit of feeding the young from the female, we can the better understand why, in so many species, the cock feeds the hen, and this without any reference to whether she is able or unable to feed herself. As the young birds grow up in the nest, they resemble their parents more and more, and it would be easier for the male to confuse them with the female, and thus take to feeding her too, or to transfer the habit from the one to the other, than it would be for the female, with a maternal instinct to guide her, to do the same by the male. Yet this, too, would be possible, and if, in any species, the female is accustomed to feed the male also, I would account for it in a similar way. This habit, on the part of the cock bird, has become, in some cases, a part of his ordinary courting attentions to the hen; and here, I believe, we have the true meaning of that billing, or “nebbing,” as it is called, which so many birds indulge in at this season. This habit, with its grotesque resemblance to kissing, has always struck me as both curious and interesting, but one seldom, in works of ornithology, meets with a reference to it, much less with any attempt to explain its philosophy. Where birds, now, merely, bill, they once, in my opinion, fed each other—or the male fed the female—but pleasure came to be experienced in the contact alone, and the passage of food, which was never necessary, gradually became obsolete. I think it by no means improbable that our own kissing may have originated in much the same way; and that birds, when thus billing, experience the same sort of pleasure that we do, when we kiss, must be obvious to any one who has watched them. With pigeons, to go no further, the act is simply an impassioned one. It would be strong evidence of the origin of this habit having been as I suppose, if we only found it amongst birds the young of which are fed by their parents. As far as I know, I believe this to be the case, but my knowledge does not enable me to speak decidedly, nor have I been able to add to it, in this particular, by consulting the standard works. Birds whose young are not fed from the bill, by their parents, are, as I think—for I am not certain in regard to all—the gallinaceous or game birds, the rapacious ones (accipitres), the plovers and stilt-walkers, the bustards, the ostriches, &c. In none of these, so far as I know, do the male and female either feed or “neb” one another—there is neither the thing, nor the form, or symbol, of it. Birds where there is either the one or the other, or both, belong, amongst others, to the crow, parrot, gull, puffin, tit or finch tribes, and all these feed the young. In the grebe family, too, the two customs obtain, but whether they are combined in any one species of it, I cannot with certainty say. It would not, of course, follow that a bird which fed its young, should, also, feed its mate, or that the pair, when caressing, should seize each other’s bills; but is there any species belonging to those orders where the chick shifts for itself, as soon as it is hatched, or, at the least, does not receive food from the parent’s beak or crop, which does either, or both, of these things? In conclusion, I can only wonder that a habit so salient, and which, to me, seems so curious—especially in the case of the caress merely, for a caress it certainly is—should not, apparently, have been thought worth consideration—hardly, even, worth notice. Of all beings, man, alone, is supposed to kiss. Birds, I assert, do, in the proper and true meaning of the word, kiss, also, and I believe that the origin of the custom has been the same, or approximately[26] the same, in each instance. To take food from one’s mouth, and put it into some one else’s, is an act of attention, I believe, amongst some savage tribes.
I am not quite sure, now I come to think of it, that the hen wagtail does do all the incubation—as I said, some lines back, she did—but I think that this is the case, as when I watched a pair I never saw the two birds together, either at or near the nest, and only once in the neighbourhood of it, all the time the eggs were being hatched. The nest, in this case, had been built, very prettily, in the last year’s one of a thrush, which it quite filled, and which made a splendid cup for it. It was interesting to see the hen bird at work. Each time, after flying down from the ivied wall of my garden, in which the nest was situated, she would feed, a little, making little runs over the lawn, after insects, with often a little fly, but just above the grass, at the end of the little run, the tail still flirting up and down. Then she would fly off for more materials, appear on the lawn, again, in a few minutes, with some in her bill, run, with them, to under the wall, fly up into the ivy, and, upon coming out, go through it all again. Thus, the wagtail makes building and eating alternate with one another, unlike the house-martins, which build, says White, “only in the morning, and dedicate the rest of the day to food and amusement.” The yellow, widely-gaping bills of the fledgling wagtails, as they hold their four heads straight up, in the nest, together, look just like delicate little vases of Venetian glass, made by Salviati; or, treating them all as one, they resemble an artistic central table-ornament, of the same manufacture. It is the inside that one sees. Just round the edge, is a thin rim of light, bright yellow, whilst all the rest is a deep, shining gamboge—not as it looks when painted on anything, but the colour of a cake of it—“all transfigured with celestial light.” No prettier design than this could be found, I am sure, for a beaker. Wagtails—I am speaking, always, of the water-wagtail—collect a number of flies, or other insects, as they run about, over the grass, before swallowing them, or flying, with them, to feed their young—that pretty office, which has been dwelt upon only from one point of view. Marry! when a tigress carries off a man to her cubs, and watches them play with him—an account of which, I believe a true one, I have read—we see it from another, such shallow, partial twitterers as we are. There is as much of beneficence in the one thing, I suppose, as the other—the flies, at least, would think so, creatures that, but a moment ago, were as bright, happy, and ethereal as the bird itself—their tiger.
“Oh yet we trust that, somehow, good
Will be the final goal of ill.”
Why, yes, one must go on trusting, I suppose (nothing else for it), but meanwhile one of this pair of wagtails has a good-sized something in his bill, to which he keeps adding, and as he sometimes, also, drops a portion of it, and again picks it up, it must be composed of a number of different entities. This living bundle he deposits, after a time, on the lawn, and then eats it piecemeal, after which he runs over the grass, making little darts, and eating at once, on secural. Shortly afterwards, however, I see him, again, with such another fardel, and with this he keeps walking about, or standing still, for quite a long time, without swallowing it—indeed, he has now stood still for so long that I am tired of watching him. This is interesting, I think, for as I have never seen birds collect insects, like this, except when young were in the nest, I have no doubt this wagtail’s idea is to feed his. But, first, his own appetite prevents him from doing so, and, then, it is as though there were a conflict between the two impulses, producing a sort of paralysis, by which nothing is done. I make sure that this is the male bird; but now appears the other—the female, “for a ducat”—carrying what I can make out, with the glasses, to be a bundle of flies, to which she keeps adding, and, shortly, she repairs, with them, to the nest. The male now comes again, and runs about, collecting a similar packet; and I can notice how, sometimes, he is embarrassed to pick up one fly more, without losing any he has, and how he secures it, sometimes, sideways in the beak, when he would, otherwise, have made a straightforward peck at it. Not only this, but, with his beak full of booty, he will—I have just seen him—pursue insects in the air. Whether he secures them, under these circumstances, I cannot, with assurance, say, but he turns and zigzags about, as does a fly-catcher, and certainly seems to be doing so. There is the attempt, at least, and would he attempt what he was not equal to? I have no doubt, myself, that he performs this feat, and yet what a wonderful feat it is! Both birds now feed the young—for the female has been collecting, for some time, again. Now, instead of, or besides, flies, each bird has in its bill a number of long, slender, white things, which hang down on each side of it, and must, I think, be grubs of some sort, though I do not know what. But stay—beneficence again!—are they—not flies in their entirety indeed, but—oh optimism and general satisfactoriness!—fly entrails, protruding, bursting, hanging, forced out by the cruel beak? Yes, that is it, it is plain now—too plain—and some of the flies are moving. I have seen a wasp tear open and devour a bluebottle—a savage sight—and it looked something the same. But all hail, maternal affection!—and appetite! to bring in the wasp. “Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!”
I believe that most birds that feed their young with insects brought in the bill, collect them in this way. Indeed the habit is common throughout the bird-world, and may be observed, equally, in the blackbird or thrush, with worms, and in the puffin, with fish—in this last case, perhaps, we see the feat in its perfection. The smallest of our woodpeckers I have watched bringing cargo after cargo of live, struggling things to his hole, but the green woodpecker, for a reason which, for aught I know, I shall be the first to make known, does not do this. From behind some bushes which quite hid me, and which commanded the nest, I have watched the domestic economy of two pairs of these birds as closely as, in such a species, it well can be watched. The glasses, turned full upon the hole, I fixed on a little stick platform, just on a level with my eyes, as I sat. Thus no time was lost in getting them to bear, but the instant one of the birds flew in, I had it, as it were, almost upon the platform in front of me. In this luxurious manner I have seen scores and scores of visits made to the nest, but never once, before the bird made its entry, through the hole, have I been able to detect anything held by it in the beak, which was always fast closed. Had anything in the shape of an insect projected from it, I must certainly have seen it, but this was never the case, and I can, therefore, say with confidence, that the green woodpecker does not feed its young by bringing them insects in its bill, as does the lesser spotted, and, no doubt, the greater spotted one also—all the woodpeckers, probably, that have not changed their habits, in relation to their food and manner of feeding. I am the more sure of this, because, as the little woodpecker collected a number of insects, each time, there can be little doubt that the green one would do this, likewise, were he accustomed to feed the young in the same way. How, then, does he feed them? I give the answer from my notes.