Yet this very ode of Wordsworth “on intimations of immortality,” has been quoted by Sir Oliver Lodge in his Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical Research,[2] as though it were evidential. I cannot understand this. Surely a feeling that a thing is, is not, in itself, evidence that it is—and, if not, how does the beauty and strength of the language which states the conviction, make it such? In this famous poem there is no jot of argument, so that the case, after reading it, stands exactly the same as it did before. No more has been said now, either for or against, than if any plain body had expressed the same ideas in his or her own way. For these mysterious sensations are not confined to poets or great people. They are a common heritage, but attract outside attention only when they find exalted utterance. Suum cuique therefore. The poet’s aptitude is to feel and express; not, as a rule, to discover.
Besides the grand sweeping rush of the wood-pigeons over the plantation, which makes the air full of sound, there is some fluttering of wings, as the birds get into the trees; but this is less than one might expect. It is afterwards, when they fly—first one and then another—from the tree they have at first settled in to some other one, that they think will suit them better, that the real noise begins. Then all silence and solitude vanishes out of the lonely plantation, and it becomes full of bustle, liveliness, and commotion. The speed and impetus of the first downward flight has carried the birds smoothly on to the branches, but now, flying under them, amongst the tree trunks, they move heavily, make a great clattering of wings in getting up to the selected bough, and often give a loud final clap with them, as they perch upon it.
Wood-pigeons are in greater numbers in this part of Suffolk than one might suppose would be the case, in a country for the most part so open. However, even a small plantation will accommodate a great many. I remember one cold afternoon in December going into one of young oaks and beeches, skirting a grove of gloomy pines, where the rooks come nightly to roost. My entry disturbed a multitude of the birds in question, but after sitting, for some time, silently, under a tree of the dividing row, they returned “in numbers numberless,” almost rivalling the rooks themselves. Some trees seemed favourites, and, from these, clouds of them would, sometimes, fly suddenly off, as if they had become overcrowded. There was a constantly recurring clatter and swish of wings, and then all at once the great bulk of the birds, as it seemed to me, rose with such a clapping as Garrick or Mrs. Siddons might have dreamed of, and departed—quantities of them, at least—in impetuous, arrowy flight. I should have said, now, that the greater number were gone, though the plantation still seemed fairly peopled. Towards four, however, it became so cold that I had to move, and all the pigeons flew out of all the trees—a revelation as to their real numbers, quite a wonderful thing to see. Some of the trees, as the birds left them, just in the moment when they were going, but still there, were neither oaks nor beeches—nor ashes, elms, poplars, firs, sycamores, or any other known kind for the matter of that—but pigeon-trees, that and nothing else.
For wrens, tits, and golden-crested wrens these fir plantations are as paradises all the year round. The first-named little bird may often be seen creeping about amongst the small holes and tunnels at the roots of trees—especially overturned trees—going down into one and coming out at another, as though it were a mouse. It is very pretty to see it peep and creep and disappear, and then demurely appear again. Often it will be underground for quite a little while—long enough to make one wonder, sometimes, if anything has happened to it—but nothing ever has. As soon as it has explored one labyrinth, it utters its little chirruppy, chirpy, chattery note, and flits, a brown little shadow, to another, into the first dark root-cavern of which it, once more, disappears. House-hunting, it looks like—for the coming spring quarter, to take from Lady Day, it being February now—but it is too early for the bird to be really thinking of a nest, and no doubt the finding of insects is its sole object. The golden-crested wrens are more aerial in their search for food. They pass from fir-top to fir-top, flitting swiftly about amongst the tufts of needles, owing to which, and their small size, it is difficult to follow their movements accurately. The pine-needles seem very attractive to them. I have often searched these for insects, but never with much success, and I think, myself, that they feed principally upon the tiny buds which begin to appear upon them, very early in the year. In winter they may often be seen about the trunks of the trees, and I remember, once, jotting down a query as to what they could get there on a cold frosty morning in December, when a spider, falling on the note-book, answered it in a quite satisfactory manner.
Many spiders hibernate under the rough outer bark of the Scotch fir, often in a sort of webby cocoon, which they spin for themselves; numbers of small pupæ, too, choose—or have chosen in their pre-existences—the same situations, especially that of the cinnabar moth, which is extremely common about here. Its luridly-coloured caterpillar—banded with deep black and orange—swarms upon the common flea-bane, which grows something like a scanty crop over much of the sandy soil; and when about to pupate, as I have noticed with interest, it ascends the trunk of the Scotch fir, and undergoes the change in one of the numerous chinks in its flaky bark. I have seen numbers of these caterpillars thus ascending and concealing themselves, but I do not know from how great a distance they come to the trees. Probably it is only from quite near, for the majority, to get to them, would have to travel farther than can be supposed possible, and, moreover, fir-trees in these parts date, as I said, only from some fifty years back. Doubtless it is mere accident, but when one sees such numbers crawling towards the trees, and ascending as soon as they reach them, it looks as though they were acting under some special impulse, such as that which urges birds to migrate, or sends the lemmings to perish in the sea. These caterpillars, however, as I now bethink me, are nauseous to birds. I have thrown them to fowls who appeared not to see them, so that they offer, I suppose, an example of warning coloration. If, however, the caterpillar is unpalatable, the chrysalis probably is also, so that it would not be for these that the golden wren, or the coal-tit, its frequent companion, searches the bark in the winter.
Coal-tits, too, feed much—ne m’en parlez point—on the delicate little buds at the ends of the clusters of spruce-needles, but they, likewise, pull at and examine the needles themselves, so may, perhaps, find some minute insects at their bases. They eat the buds of the larch, too, and, as said before, whatever they can get by prying and probing about, on the trunks of all these firs—especially that of the Scotch one, which they search, sometimes, very industriously. Whilst thus engaged they say at intervals, “Woo-tee, woo-tee, woo-tee” (or “Wee-tee,” a sound between the two), and sometimes “Tooey, tooey, tooey-too; tooey, tooey, tooey-too.” They flit quickly from place to place, and, both in this and their way of feeding generally, a good deal resemble the little golden wrens. The latter, however, are brisker, more fairy-like, and still more difficult to watch. Yet, do not let me wrong the coal-tit—he moves most daintily. Every little hop is a little flutter with the wings, a little flirt with the tail. His little legs you hardly see. He has a little game—not hop, skip, and jump, but hop, flirt, and flutter. His motion combines all three—in what proportions, how or when varying, that no man knoweth. How, exactly, he gets to any place that he would, you do not see, you cannot tell—he is there, that you see, but the rest is doubtful. He does not know, himself, I believe. “Aber frag’ mich nür nicht wie,” he might say, with Heine, if you asked him about it.
But if there is such a mystery in the movements of the coal-tit, what is to be said about those of the long-tailed one? Most unfair would it be to omit him, now that the other has been mentioned. Nor will I. Dear little birdikins! The naturalist must be blasé, indeed, who could ever be tired of noting your ways, though he might well be weary of following you about amongst the delicate larches, which are most your fairy home and in which you look most fairy-like. Such a dance as you lead him! For always you are passing on, making a hasting, running examination of the twigs of the trees you flit through, searching systematically, from one to another, in a sort of aerial forced-march, which makes you—oh, birdikins!—most difficult to watch. Like other tits, you—Oh, but hang the apostrophe; I can’t sustain it, so must drop, again—and I think for ever—into the sober third person. Like other tits, then, these little long-tailed ones are fond of hanging, head downwards, on the under side of a bough or twig: but I am not sure if I have seen other tits come down on a bough or twig in this way—at any rate not to the same extent. Say that a blue or a great tit, and a long-tailed one, are both on the same bough, together. The two former will fly, or flutter—fly, to another, alight upon its upper side, and get round to its under one, by a process that can be seen. The long-tailed tit will jump and arrive on the under side, hanging there head downwards. That, at least, is what it looks like, as if he had turned himself on his back, in the air, before seizing hold of his twig. Really there is a little swing down, after seizing it—like an acrobat on a trapeze—but this is so quick that it eludes the eye. It is by his legerdemain and illusion, and by his jumping, rather than flying, from bough to bough, that the long-tailed tit is distinguished. He often makes a good long jump—a real jump—without appearing to aid himself with his wings at all. The note of these tits is a “Zee, zee—zee, zee, zee, zee,” but it is not of such a sharp quality as the “zee” or “tzee” of the blue tit. It is more pleasing—indeed, there is something very pleasing about it. What is there, in fact, that is not pleasing about this little bird?
But I have something more to say upon the subject of the coal-tit’s diet; for he eats, I believe, the seeds of the fir-cones, and manages not only to pick them out of these, but to pick the cone itself to pieces in so doing—a wonderful feat, surely, when one thinks how large and hard the cone is, and how small the bird. It is not on the tree that I have seen these tits feeding in this manner, but on the ground, and the question, for me, is whether the cones that lay everywhere about had been detached and then reduced, sometimes, almost to shreds, by them or by squirrels. At first I unhesitatingly put it down to the latter, but I soon noticed that in these particular firs—not part of a plantation but skirting the road, as is common here—a squirrel was never to be seen. Neither were coal-tits numerous, but still a pair or two seemed to live here, and were often engaged with the cones. Half-a-dozen of these I took home to examine at leisure. Two, I found, had been only just commenced on, and the punctures upon them were certainly such as might have been made by the beak of a small bird, suggesting that the tit had here begun the process of picking the cone to pieces, before any squirrel had touched it. One of the outer four-sided scales had been removed, and as no cut or excoriation was visible upon the surface thus exposed, this, again, looked more as if the scale aforesaid had been seized with a pincers—the bird’s beak—and torn off, than as though it had been cut away with a chisel—the squirrel’s teeth—for, in this latter case, the plate beneath would, in all probability, have been cut into, too, at some point, and not left in its natural smooth state. Another two of these cones consisted of the bases only, and from their appearance and the debris around them, seemed to have been pecked and torn, rather than gnawed to pieces. In five out of the six, the extreme base—that part from the centre of which the stalk springs—had been left untouched. In the sixth, however, this had been attacked, and presented a rough, hacked, punctured appearance, the stalk itself—represented by just a point—having apparently been pecked through, suggesting strongly that the tits had commenced work while the cone hung on the tree, and had severed it in this way. All round the basal circle the scales had been stripped off, and the exposed surface was smooth and unexcoriated—as in the other instance—except where a portion of it seemed to have been torn, not cut, away. Two seed-cavities were exposed and empty. It certainly looked as though these cones had been hacked and pulled to pieces by the tits, and not gnawed by squirrels, so as this agreed with the absence of the latter, and what I had actually seen the bird doing, I came to the conclusion that they had been. Perhaps there is nothing very wonderful in it after all, but, looking at a fir-cone, I should have thought it clean beyond the strength of a coal-tit to tear it to pieces. But what, now, is the origin of the name “coal-tit,” which seems to have no particular meaning? Is it a corruption of “cone-tit,” which, if the bird really feeds on the seeds of the fir, and procures them in this manner, would have one? German Kohlmeise, however, is rather against this hypothesis.
Young Nightjars