Bird Life Glimpses

by Edmund Selous

“Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships and praying hands.”

How much good might be done in the world, could such people, all at once, when about to be mischievous, be turned into dabchicks![32] Soon after this the birds got away from the nest, leaving the one egg in it unhatched, and my observations came, in consequence, to an end. The one egg, doubtless, was addled, and as I never could clearly make out more than two chicks together, I suppose this must have been the case with another of them, too. If so, however, it seems strange that this one should have disappeared, whilst the birds continued, for some time, to sit on the other.

On the 18th of the following August I found another nest, in which was one chick, together with three eggs still unhatched. It lay but just off the bank, and cover was afforded by some spreading willow-bushes. It was only by standing amidst these, however, that I could just see the nest, beyond a thin fringe of reeds, which guarded it. This was not very comfortable, so as the willows were too thin and flexible to climb, and my house was not very far off, I walked back, and came, again, after dark, with a pair of Hatherley steps, which I set up amongst the willows, where it remained for the next three weeks, and made a capital tower of observation, from which I could look right down into the nest, at only a few yards distance. At these very close quarters, and never once suspected, I was witness, day by day, of such little scenes as I have described, so that if I had been one of the birds themselves, I could hardly have gained a more intimate knowledge of them, as far as seeing was concerned. My near horizon was, indeed, limited almost to the nest itself, but by mounting the steps higher, or by standing on them, I could get a very good view, both up and down the stream, and was yet so well concealed that once a flock of doves flew into the bushes, just about me, and remained there quite unsuspicious. These steps, indeed, placed overnight, make a capital observatory, for, as they stand upright, they do not need to be leant against anything, and their thin, open wood-work is indistinguishable amidst any growth that attains their own height. They are, moreover, comfortable either to sit or stand on.

Returning to the dabchicks, two out of the three remaining eggs were hatched out in as many days, but the last one, as in the case of the first nest I had watched, remained as it was for several days longer, nor can I, from my notes, make out whether it was finally hatched, or not.[33] However, as I say that I feel sure it was, it must, I suppose, have disappeared from the nest, but I never saw more than three chicks together, either with one or both of the old birds. Later on, the parents became more separated, and I then never saw more than two chicks with either, which makes me think that, at this stage, they divide the care of the young between them. They had then, for some time, ceased to resort to the nest, but as long as they continued to do so, they shared their responsibilities in another way, for whilst one of them, which I took to be the female, generally sat in the nest with the chicks upon her back, the other—the male—used to come to it and feed them. This he did more assiduously than any bird that I have ever seen discharge the office, for between 6 and 7, one evening, he had fed them forty times. After that I ceased to count, but he continued his ministrations in the same eager manner, for another three-quarters of an hour. To get the weed, he generally dived, and, on approaching the nest, with it, would make a little “peep, peeping” note, on which two or three little red bills would be thrust out from under the mother’s wings, followed by their respective heads and bodies, as all, or some, of them came scrambling down. The instant the weed had been given them, they all scrambled up again, to disappear entirely under the little tent of the wings. As this took place, on an average, every minute and a half, and often much more quickly, the animation and charm of the scene may be imagined. The male showed the greatest eagerness in performing this prime duty, and if ever he was unable, as sometimes happened, to reach any of the chicks over the rounded bastion of the nest, he would get quite excited, and make little darts up at it, stretching to the utmost, and uttering his little “peep, peep.” If this proved unsuccessful, he would go anxiously round to another side of the nest, and feed them from there. At other times the chicks were fed in the water, on which the weed was sometimes dropped for them, the parent having first helped to soften it—as it seemed to me—by biting it about in the end of his bill. Sometimes, too, the weed was laid on the edge of the nest, but, as a rule, the chick received it from the tip of the parent’s beak. As I say, I never saw more than the three chicks, and if the fourth was hatched, the birds must have left the nest immediately afterwards, as is, I believe, their custom. Of the three, two would generally sit together, under the one wing of the mother, the third being under the other, from which one may be sure that she carries all four of them, two under each. It struck me, several times, that there was a sort of natural cavity, or hollow, in the old bird’s back, under each wing, with a corresponding arch in the wing itself, making, as it were, a little tent or domed chamber, for the chicks to sit in. Of this, however, I cannot be quite sure, but it is such a confirmed habit of the chicks to sit on the mother’s back, beneath her wings, that there would be nothing, I think, very surprising in it. Never, one may almost say—but, at any rate, “hardly ever”—do the chicks sit beside the mother, in the nest in which they were born (the limitation, as it will be seen later on, is a necessary one). It is as proper to them to sit on the mother as it is to her to sit on the nest.

When off duty—that is to say, when not feeding the chicks—the male would sometimes make pretty lengthy excursions up the stream, as would the mother, too, when not sitting—up stream, I say, because they never seemed to go far down it. More often, however, he would stay about, in the neighbourhood of the nest, and then the sitting bird would sometimes call him up to it, by uttering a very soft and low note. He would then appear, stealing amongst the reeds with a look of gentle inquiry, and, on gaining the nest, both birds together would make a curious little soft clucking, or rather chucking, noise, expressive of love and content. “Dearest chuck!” they always seemed to me to say, and whether they did or not, that, I am sure, is what they meant. Coming, every day, to my little watch-tower, and sitting there, sometimes, for hours together, I thought, at the end of a week, that I had seen everything in connection with these birds’ care of their young, but there was one matter which I had yet to learn. I had, indeed, already had a hint of it, with the last pair of birds, besides that it seemed to me, on general principles, to be likely, but the optical proof had been wanting. One day, however, whilst walking quietly up the stream, I met one of my pair of dabchicks—the mother, as I think—swimming down it. She saw me at the same time as I did her, and swam to shelter, but she was not much alarmed, and bending amongst the reeds till my face was only on a level with their tops, I waited to see her again. Soon she appeared, coming softly towards me, but seeming to scrutinise the bank sharply, and, all at once, spying me, down she went, with extraordinary force and velocity, so that a little shower of spray—and, indeed, more than spray—was flung quite high into the air. I had not seen a sign of the chicks, and it seemed hardly possible that they could be on her back, all the time—but we shall see. Coming up, after her dive, turned round the other way, she swam steadily up the stream, and I soon lost her, round a bend of it. In order to see her again, and as a means of allaying her fears, I now climbed into a willow-tree, and from here I saw her, resting, in a pretty little pool of the stream. For ten minutes or more, now, with the glasses full upon her, I could see no sign of a chick, except, perhaps, that the wings were a trifle raised—but nothing appeared underneath them. All at once, however, I caught something; there was a motion, a struggling, and then a little red bill and round black head appeared, thrust out between the two wings, in the dip of the neck. Then a second head showed itself, and, at last, with a peep here, and a scramble there, I made out all three. I am not quite sure of this, however, when the partner bird—the male, as I think him—swims into the pool, and instantly, as he appears, a chick tumbles down the mother, and comes swimming towards him. It is fed on the water, and, directly, afterwards the old bird dives several times in succession, at the end of which he has a piece of weed in his bill, which he reaches to the chick. The chick is thus fed several times, and then climbs on to his father’s back, who, almost before he is under the wing, dives with him. On coming up, again, he rises a little in the water, and shakes himself violently, but the chick is not thrown off—he sits tight all the time. A second chick now swims up from the mother, and is fed in just the same way. Then, as the male dives again, the first chick becomes detached, and the two are on the water together. Both are soon fed, the male diving for them as he did before, and, whilst this is going on, I see the third chick, looking out between the wings of its mother. All three, then, have been on her back, and there, without the smallest doubt, they were, when she dived down in that tremendously sudden manner. It is a pity I had not seen them get up, first, as in the case of the male, and, also, that I lost sight of the female for a few moments, but it is quite improbable that the chicks should have been waiting, somewhere, for the mother, and taken their seats during the one little break in the continuity of my observations. At this early age the chicks are hardly ever to be seen without one of the parents, even in the nest—I doubt, indeed, if I have ever seen them there alone.

The dabchick, therefore, is in the habit, not only of swimming with all its family on its back, and quite invisible, but of diving with them thus, too, and so accustomed are the chicks to be carried, or to sit, in this way, that during the early days of their life they may almost be said to lead a parasitical existence. Though they mount upon either parent, yet it has seemed to me that they prefer one to the other, and I think it more likely, on the whole, that the one who sits habitually with them, thus perched, in the nest, is the mother rather than the father, though, if so, it is the latter who does most of the feeding. It has appeared to me, too, though it may be mere fancy, that the chicks not only prefer the mother’s back, but that they find more difficulty in getting upon the male’s. Thus, upon the last occasion mentioned, when two out of the three left the mother, to go to the father, the first one to get up on him only succeeded in doing so after a great deal of exertion, whilst the last was struggling for such a very long time that I began to think he never would succeed, and when, at last, he did, he lay, for a little, in full view, as though exhausted. It is natural, of course, that the chicks should leave either parent, to be fed by the other, but I remember, once, when they happened to be sitting on the male’s back, in the nest—which was unusual—at one soft sound from the mother, they all flung themselves off it, into the nest, and scrambled up with equal haste on to hers, as soon as she had taken her place there, which she did directly. Possibly they thought they would be fed, and were hungry, but they did not seem disappointed, though they were not, nor had I ever seen so much enthusiasm shown before. However, as I say, this may be mere fancy, but whether they prefer it or not, they certainly do seem to sit much more on one parent, than on the other. It would be difficult to imagine a more comfortable seat than the back of either must be. It is like a large, flat powder-puff—but a frightened powder-puff, with its fluff standing all on end—whilst right upon it, though, of course, far back, a tiny little brush of a tail stands bolt upright. The wings, as a rule, cover most of this, and it is under their awning that the chicks, mostly, live. The chicks are pretty little things. At first they look black all over, but, on closer inspection, they are seen to be striped longitudinally, like little tigers—black and a soft, greyish yellow or buff—the beak being a mahogany red. The young of the great crested grebe are striped like this, also. Probably it is a family pattern, and represents the ancestral coloration, like the tartan of a Highlander, which, however, lasts through life—or used to.

On the 13th of August, after having watched them from the 8th, I made a discovery in regard to this pair of dabchicks, and thus, through them, the species, similar to that I had made with the moorhens, in my pond—similar, but not, I think, quite the same—and when I say a discovery, I mean, of course, that it was one for myself, which is, indeed, all I care about. I had got to my watch-tower before it was light, and could not, for some time, make out the nest. At length, when I could see it, I saw the one white egg lying in it, which showed me that the bird was not there. Shortly afterwards, I heard both of them near the nest, and thought they would soon appear. As they did not, however, but seemed to keep in a spot which, though only a few paces off, was yet invisible from where I sat, I came down and climbed a willow-tree, commanding a view of it. I then saw the female (as I think) floating, or, rather, sitting, on the water, and, after a while, the male came up, and one of the chicks, going to him from off her back, was fed in the usual way. The female then—owing, perhaps, to the noise which I could not help making, for I was most uncomfortably situated, and the willow, though thin, was full of dead branches which kept snapping—swam up the stream. The male, however, remains, and, all at once, greatly to my surprise and interest, jumps up upon what I now see to be another nest, or nest-like structure, though I have not noticed it there before. Hardly is he on, when he jumps off again, and this he does two or three times more, at short intervals, in a restless, nervous sort of way. Having jumped down for the last time, he swims a little out, and appears, to my alarmed imagination, to keep glancing up into the tree, where I now, however, though it is very difficult to do so, keep perfectly still. At length, losing his suspicions, he floats again on the water, whilst the chick swims out from him, and then climbs again on his back. Then comes an interchange of ideas, or, at any rate, feelings, between him and his mate. He gives a little “chook-a-chook-a-chook-a,” and this is answered, from the neighbourhood of the nest, by a similar note. Pleased, he rejoins, is again responded to, the “chook-a-chook-a” becomes quicker, higher, shriller, and, all at once, both birds—each at its separate place—break into that little glad duet which I have mentioned so often, but cannot help mentioning here again. Then, swimming once more to the pseudo-nest, the male again jumps up on to, or, rather, into it, and remains sitting there, for some little time. The little chick has swum beside him to it, and now makes strenuous efforts to climb up after his dam, but he does not quite succeed, though I think, in time, he would have done, had not the latter come off, when he, at once, follows him. The chicks, however, had never had any difficulty in getting on to the real nest.

The discomfort of my position approaching, now, to the dignity of torture, I was obliged to get out of it, and, in doing so, made so much noise that the bird swam off, up the stream. Upon this I came down and examined the new nest, which was close to the bank. It was quite different to the other, being six or eight inches high, round the edge, with a deep depression in the centre, and seemed made, altogether, of the flags amongst which it was situated, some of the growing ones being bent inwards, so as to enter into its construction. But this is a moorhen’s nest and not a dabchick’s, which latter is formed of dank and rotten weeds, fished up by the birds from the bottom of the water. It is made flatter, moreover, and does not rise so high above the surface of the stream, though in both these points there is, no doubt, considerable variation. Here, then, was something new in the domestic life of the dabchick. For two days after this I was too busy elsewhere to come to the stream, but on the morning of the third I got there about 6.30, and climbed into the same tree as before. I did not see either of the dabchicks, but heard them dipping about, some way lower down the stream, as I had before, when they did not come to the nest. I therefore came down and climbed another tree, and, as soon as I had done so, I saw a little beyond me—about as far from the first pseudo-nest as the latter was from the nest itself—two other structures, a few feet from each other, both of which had more or less the look of a moorhen’s nest. In one of these sat, with an air of absolute proprietorship, a dabchick with one chick, and here they remained till the partner bird swam up, a little while afterwards, when they came off, and there was the usual pretty scene. The chick had been sitting, not, as it appeared to me, in the basket or depression of the nest, but only just beyond the edge of it, as though—and this I had noticed on the former occasion—it had struggled up as high as it could, and there remained.

From now till about a quarter to 9, when they all went off, and I came down, both the old birds frequently ascended and sat in this nest, whilst one or other of the chicks—for there were now two, if not three—tried to do so too, but never succeeded in getting quite over the edge of it, though struggling to accomplish this feat. The old birds, too, had necessarily to make a much more vigorous and higher jump than they were accustomed to take when getting into their real nest. All this seemed to point to its being a moorhen’s and not a dabchick’s nest, and when I came down and looked at it more closely—it being only a few feet from the bank—that is what it seemed to be. The other nest near it seemed, still more obviously, a moorhen’s, but this only because it was newly made, and had not yet been pressed down. In both, the growing flags had been turned down, to aid in the construction. Now, both these nests were near to the one which I had been watching, and one of them was not more than a few paces off. If we say a dozen—and I do not think it could have been more—then the three lay along a length of twenty-four paces of the stream, nor was there anything in the configuration of the latter, to cut off the owners of the one from those of the others. It seems, indeed, quite impossible that in this tiny little stream, which I was constantly scanning, up and down, I should never have seen more than one pair of dabchicks, at the same time, had three, or even two, pairs of them built within so limited an area. There was, indeed, one other pair—and, I think, from having watched the place through the winter, only one—in this lower part of the stream, but in another reach of it, some little way off, where they had a nest of their own. In this nest I had seen one of them sitting with its chick, which was about half-grown, and therefore more than twice the size of the largest of my own birds’ brood. I can, therefore, have no doubt that the birds I saw in these two later-used extra nests, were the same that I had watched hatching out their eggs in the original one, nor did I ever see them on the latter, after they had once left it for the others.

It seems, then, either that the dabchick must make, besides the true nest in which the eggs are laid, one or more other ones of a different type, and which are put to a different use; or else, that it habitually uses those of the moorhen, for this purpose—to sit in, namely, after leaving its own—thus taking advantage of the latter bird’s habit of building several nests. I believe, myself, that the two extra nests, in which I saw my dabchicks, were moorhen’s nests, for not only did they look like them, but once, when their usurpers were away, I saw two large moorhen chicks climb, first into one, and then the other; and, on another occasion, they were driven away from both of them by the mother dabchick, who pursued them in fierce little rushes through the water, with her family on her back. Some may think that I have taken a long time to make out a simple matter. What more natural than that a mass of reeds and rushes—which is all a moorhen’s nest is—should sometimes serve as a resting-place for other reed-haunting birds? But there is a difference between something casual and something habitual, and everything I saw in the case of these two dabchicks suggested a regular practice. Parasitism in one species of bird, in regard to the nest of another, though not extending to the loss of the building or incubatory instinct, is almost as interesting as if it did, for we see in it a possible stage in a process by which this might be reached.