As bower-building prevails only amongst one group of birds—not being shared by allied groups—and as birds, universally almost, make some sort of nest, we may assume that the latter habit preceded the former. If so, the ancestral bower-bird, from which the various present species may be supposed to be descended, would have built a nest before he built a bower. Is it not more probable, therefore, that the new structure should have grown out of the old one, than that the two are not in any way connected? The orthodox view, indeed, would seem to be the reverse of this, for we read in standard works of ornithology that the bowers have nothing to do with the nests of the species making them; whilst, at the same time, complete ignorance as to their origin and meaning is confessed. But if we know nothing about a thing, how do we know that it has nothing to do with some other thing? One argument, brought forward to show that the nests of the bower-bird are not in any way connected with their bowers, is that the former present no extraordinary feature. But if the bower has grown out of the nest, in the way and by the steps which I suppose, there is no reason why the latter—and the bird’s general habits of nidification—should not have remained as they were. As long as a single structure was used for a double purpose, the paramount importance of the original one—that of incubation—would have kept it from changing in any great degree, and when there had come to be two structures for two purposes, that only would have been subjected to modification which stood in need of it. For the rest, as incubation and courtship are very different things, one might expect the architecture in relation to them to be of a very different kind. For these reasons, and having watched rooks at their nests in the winter, and the breeding habits of some other birds, I think it possible (1) that the bower has grown out of the nest, and (2) that the sexual activities of which it is, as it were, the focus, were once displayed about the nest itself. On the whole, however—though I suggest this as a possible explanation—it is perhaps more likely that the cleared arena where so many birds meet for the purposes of courtship—as, e.g. the blackcock, capercailzie, ruff, argus pheasant, cock-of-the-rock, &c. &c.—is the starting-point from which the bower-birds have proceeded, especially as one species of the family has not got so very much farther than this, even now.
Rooks, then, to leave speculation and return to fact, are swayed, even in winter, by love as well as by hunger—those two great forces which, as Schiller tells us, rule the world between them. They wake, presumably, hungry; yet, before they can have fed much, make shift to spend a little while on the scene of their domestic blisses. Hunger then looks after them till an hour or so before evening, when they return to their rookeries, and love takes up the ball for as long as daylight lasts. And so, with birds as men—
“Erfüllt sich der Getriebe
Durch Hunger und durch Liebe.”
But there is a third great ruling power in the life of both, which Schiller seems to have forgotten—sleep—and as its reign, each day, is as long, or longer, than that of the other two conjoined, and as it long outlasts one of them, it may be called, perhaps, the greatest of the three.
Heron Fishing
CHAPTER IV
There is a heronry on an estate here, into which, in the early spring, I have sometimes crept, coming before dawn, in silence and darkness, to be there when it awoke. What an awakening! A sudden scream, as though the night were stabbed, and cried out—a scream to chill one's very blood—followed by a deep “oogh,” and then a most extraordinary noise in the throat, a kind of croak sometimes, but more often a kind of pipe, like a subdued siren—a fog-signal—yet pleasing, even musical. Sometimes, again, it suggests the tones of the human voice—weirdly, eerily—vividly caught for a moment, then an Ovid’s metamorphosis. This curious sound, in the production of which the neck is as the long tube of some metal instrument, is very characteristic, and constantly heard. And now scream after scream, each one more harsh and wild than the last, rings out from tree to tree. Other sounds—strange, wild, grotesque—cannot even suffer an attempt to describe them. All this through the darkness, the black of which is now beginning to be “dipped in grey.” There is the snapping of the bill, too—a soft click, a musical “pip, pip”—amidst all these uncouth noises. On the whole, it is the grotesque in sound—a carnival of hoarse, wild, grotesque inarticulations. Amidst them, every now and then, one hears the great sweep of pinions, and a shadowy form, just thickening on the gloom, is lost in the profounder gloom of some tree that receives it.
Most of the nests are in sad, drooping-boughed firs—spruces, a name that suits them not—trees whose very branches are a midnight, as Longfellow has called them,[11] in a great, though seldom-mentioned poem. Others are in grand old beeches, which, with the slender white birch and the maple, stand in open clearings amidst the shaggy firs, and make this plantation a paradise. Sometimes, as the herons fly out of one tree into another, they make a loud, sonorous beating with their great wings, whilst at others, they glide with long, silent-sounding swishes, that seem a part of the darkness. Two will, often, pursue each other, with harshest screams, and, all at once, from one of them comes a shout of wild, maniacal laughter, that sets the blood a-tingling, and makes one a better man to hear. Whilst sweeping, thus, in nuptial flight, about their nesting-trees, they stretch out their long necks in front of them, sometimes quite straight, more often bent near the breast like a crooked piece of copper wire. A strange appearance!—everything stiff and abrupt, odd-looking, uncouth, no graceful curves or sweeps. The long legs, carried horizontally, balance the neck behind—but grotesquely, as one gargoyle glares at another. Thus herons fly within the heronry, but as they sail out, en voyage, the head is drawn back between the shoulders, in the more familiar way. As morning dawns, the shadowy “air-drawn” forms begin to appear more substantially. Several of the birds may then be seen perched about in the trees, some gaunt and upright, others hunched up in a heap, with, perhaps, one statuesque figure placed, like a sentinel, on the top of a tall, slender larch, the thin pinnacle of the trunk of which is bent over to form a perch.
Other, and much sweeter, sounds begin now to mingle with the harsh, though not unpleasing screams, and, increasing every moment in volume, make them, at last, but part of a universal and most divine harmony. The whole plantation has become a song. Song-thrush and mistle-thrush make it up, mostly, between them, but all help, and all is a music; chatters and twitters seem glorified, nothing sounds harshly, joy makes it melody. There is a time—the daylight of dawn, but not daylight—when the birds sing everywhere, as though to salute it. As the real daylight comes, this sinks and almost ceases, and never in the whole twenty-four hours, is there such an hour again. The laugh, and answering laugh, of the green woodpecker is frequent, now, and mingles sweetly with the loud cooing of the wood-pigeons—not the characteristic note, but another, very much like that of dovecot pigeons, when they make a few quick little turns from one side to another, moving the feet dancingly, but keeping almost in the same place: a brisk, satisfied sound, not the pompous rolling coo of a serious proposal, nor yet that more tender-meaning note, with which the male broods on the nest, caressed by the female. But the representative of this last, in the wood-pigeon—the familiar spring and summer sound—is now frequently heard, and seems getting towards perfection. So, at last, it is day, and the loud, bold clarion of the pheasant is like the rising sun.