Watching Blackbirds, Nightingales, Sand-martins, etc.
Birds are never more charming to watch than when they are building their nests, and, of all our British nest-builders, few, perhaps, build more charmingly than the blackbird. It is the hen alone that collects and shapes the materials, but the male bird accompanies her in every excursion either to or from the nest. When she is busied in its construction he sits in a tree or a bush near by, and, on her leaving it for fresh leaves or moss, follows her in a series of flights from tree to tree, and, finally, down on to the ground, where the two hop about, closely in each other's company. It is seldom that the hen flies at once to where she means to collect her materials, though time after time it may be at the same place. Usually she flies past the tree—all beautiful in spring and early morning—where the cock sits, and perches in another at some little distance beyond it. There you may lose sight of her, but as soon as you see her handsome gold-billed mate leave his bower and fly to hers, you know that she has flown on, and is now perched somewhere else. Thus you may see them glancing through the greenwood, she usually leading, but sometimes each alternately passing the other. Coming to the collecting ground—for there is usually some spot more liked by the birds than any other—the hen flies down and begins to hop about, making, at intervals, little dives forward with her bill, till she has collected some moss, dry grass, or quite a little bundle of dead brown leaves. The male bird follows her all about, hopping where she hops, prying where she pries, and seeming to make a point of doing all that she does except actually collect material for the nest, and this, in my experience, he never does do. Then, the one laden, the other empty-billed, they both fly back in just the same way, and the cock will sit again, often in the same tree, whilst the hen adds her store to the growing bulk of the nest. I have watched a pair make thirty-one excursions to and from the nest between five and eight o'clock in the morning. By half-past eight or nine the building would cease, nor would it be commenced again during the rest of the day.[22]
[22] As far as I could ascertain this by coming a few times at intervals.
Anything lovelier than the picture presented by the two birds thus busied together in the early, dewy morning, it would be difficult to imagine. It would arouse the enthusiasm of all except very dull people, and is even a prettier thing to see, I think, than when both male and female work jointly. In the latter case the straightforward business element predominates, but here, the attendance of the male bird upon the female, and his evident pleasure in such attendance, his anxious interest in what she is doing, and joy in seeing her do it, throws a more romantic element into the picture. It is that which makes me extend the word "busy" to both the birds, for the cock is as busy in escorting and observing the hen as she is in collecting the materials for and building the nest; whilst that she loves him and is cheered by his society, his presence making "the labour she delights in" still more a joy, is also apparent. These are sweet and lovely things to see, and the joy of them is the greater that the emotions concerned are so direct and simple, without those windings and ambiguities, those side-issues and counter-currents which, with us, lead direct to grey hairs, and novels not by Scott or Jane Austen. Here are no troublesome entanglements, no tiresome perplexities, no conscientious sacrificings of the best beloved to every other possible person and consideration. All is sweet simplicity and giving up to—not giving up. These blackbirds love each other and carry it through. They do not think of twenty other blackbirds and fail or come in draggle-tail at the end—as in the novels. Nor are they bothered with "questions." It is refreshing—most refreshing—to see them—like a sparkle of Gilbert after some very "serious" dulness.
Roughly speaking, there are three stages in the building of a blackbird's nest. The first or foundation stage consists of moss, sticks, and leaves; the second is the mud stage; and the third, that of dry grass and fibre, with which the interior is finally lined. The nest of the blackbird differs, in this respect, from that of the thrush. The latter bird, as is well known, lays its eggs in a smooth plastered cup formed, not of mud, as one would think, but of rotten wood and cow-dung. The blackbird, after having collected all the moss and leaves that it deems necessary and made therewith the mass and bulk of the nest, resorts to some little ditch or sluggish stream and trowels up from its margin mud indeed, but not mud alone, for there is amidst it—generally, if not always—a certain proportion of the fibrous roots or rootlets of mud-loving aquatic plants. Of these, the bird can take a firm hold with its bill, and as the mud adheres to the fibrous network, it is enabled to carry a considerable quantity of it at a time, though a greater or less amount often falls off during the passage. It is in this circumstance, as I believe, that one can read the origin of the "extraordinary habit," as Darwin calls it, of a bird's plastering the inside of its nest with mud. It is the thrush to which he alludes, but the description applies equally, and, in respect of the material employed, still more accurately, to the blackbird. At a certain point in its construction, the nest of the latter would be mistaken by anyone without previous experience, for that of a thrush, the cup being as deep and perfect in form and the workmanship not noticeably inferior. It is, however, of a darker colour—black, or approaching to black—though this may vary, according to locality. Over the whole surface are seen the scorings of the bird's beak, which seems to have been used as a trowel. But now, if the nest had been examined a day or two before, its interior, and, especially, the bottom of it, would have been found to be composed of a dank moist mass of vegetation, largely consisting of small water-plants, both the green part and the roots, to the many fibres of which latter a quantity of mud was adhering. Here, then, we read the whole story. Fibrous material was needed on general principles by the female blackbird, and she found it in the spreading network of rootlets, belonging to water-loving plants that grew in little rills and ditches, near about her bosky brakes. But to this, mud clung, and, in consequence, there came to be a good deal of the latter in the cup of the nest. Something must be done with it. She began to daub and press it, and, as she became, gradually, more and more a plasterer, mud seemed more and more the proper sort of material to use, till, at last, she sought it for itself alone, utilising the fibres which bound it together, and which had, at first, been what, alone, she sought, as a means of conveying it. But when the mud, thus brought, had been thoroughly smoothed and plastered, so that the nest seemed perfect and "a thing complete," like the thrush's, there would still be something more to be done, for she—our hen blackbird—had always been accustomed to work in stages, and the final or grass-thatching stage had not yet been entered upon. Therefore, she would cover up and entirely conceal all her fine plaster-work, so that no one, seeing the finished nest, would imagine that it existed in any part of it. But will she always do this? I cannot think it, for she is a bird of sprightly intelligence, and I believe that, like the thrush, she will some day find out that the neatly-plastered cup of mud does quite well enough to lay her eggs in, and that the further labour of thatching it with grass can be very well dispensed with. Any saving of time or of labour must be of advantage to a species in the struggle for existence, and those birds who thatched their nests more thinly would be enabled to lay their eggs sooner, and thus rear more offspring. In this way, as well as on the "least action" principle, and the exercise of ordinary intelligence, the last stage of lining the cup with grass may finally cease. It has ceased with the thrush, but, with the thrush, there has been a still further process of change, for it no longer plasters its nest with mud, but with decaying wood and with cow-dung. Assuming the ancestors of the bird to have once used mud, and lined the interior, as does the blackbird, there does not seem to me to be any great difficulty in explaining this change. The blackbirds that I watched building their nest, always, when the proper period arrived, flew to a certain part of a little muddy dyke (it is in a land of dykes that I reside) some little way from the plantation in which the nest was situated, and there, lying flat behind tufts and tussocks of reeds and grass, I watched them take their mud as I have described—the female, that is to say, but a husband much interested in seeing a baby carried would deserve half the credit of carrying it. Now, much nearer, probably, than this specially-resorted-to dyke was some decayed tree or tree-trunk, whilst over the fields which it intersected and which adjoined the plantation, cows or oxen sometimes grazed. Here, again, a change in the working material might prove of advantage, and when once a bird had become a plasterer, intelligence, and also haste, might lead it to use whatever came first to hand. Bees will carry oatmeal instead of pollen if the former be put in their way, and birds may be credited with equal adaptability.
After watching blackbirds building, and examining the nest in its various stages of construction, I think it much more likely that the thrush has passed through, and then discarded, a final stage of thatching the nest, than that it has stopped short at the stage of plastering, and not yet got to the one of thatching or lining. Numberless birds, including other members of this family, line their nests with grass or other soft materials, whereas plastering is a comparatively rare habit. It is legitimate to assume that that which is common has preceded that which is rare. I would here point out that whilst, in works of ornithology, reference is always made to the strange habit which the thrush has of daubing its nest, nothing, as a rule, is said in regard to the similar habit of the blackbird, or, if anything is, we are told merely that mud is used to bind the materials together. The facts, however, are as I state, and, did the blackbird not line its nest with grass after it had so carefully plastered it with mud brought from the waterside, it would be as noted in this respect as is the thrush, its near relative.
I have never heard the male blackbird sing whilst thus attending the female as she built her nest, not even when he waited for her in a tree, during the actual time of its fashioning, though here was a fine poetical opportunity for him. Song, it seemed, had ended when once his bride had been won, and his rivals vanquished by it. It was the same, to a considerable extent, with a pair of nightingales that I watched under similar circumstances. I did, indeed, sometimes hear the song when the bird singing was invisible, and, therefore, I cannot say that it was not this particular one, which, for other reasons I am inclined to think that it was. But during far the greater part of the time, and always when I could see him, he was as silent as his mate. It was in the early morning and not the night-time, but nightingales sing at all hours, both of the day and night The early morning is, indeed, a favourite time with them, and it is then, in the beginning of spring, when nests have yet to be built and before the birds are properly married, that one can best observe how powerful a vehicle of hatred and rivalry their melodious strains are. I have closely watched two rival males for nearly an hour. Let anyone refer to my account of the rival wheatears, substitute a plantation with bush and tangle, and the turf-bordered roadside adjoining, for the open, sandy warrens, and song—but much more frequently indulged in—for the little frenzied dancings,[23] and the two pictures will be identical, or nearly so. There was the same keeping close to, yet not appearing to follow, each other, the attending to each other's motions without seeming specially to watch them, the drawing near and, then, getting apart, only to approach again, the little bursts of fury—but here, mostly, harmonious—preceding each engagement, and surmounting, each time, that discretionary part of valour, which, in either case, both the birds seemed largely to possess. There were three engagements, one bird, each time, making, as though no longer able to control itself, a sudden little frenzied dash at the other. In no case, however, was the conflict very severe, and the attacked bird soon flew away, with which result the attacker seemed well satisfied. It looked more like a little furious play than a real fight, and so, no doubt, it would, were Moth or Cobweb to have a tussle with Peaseblossom or Mustardseed. Oberon and Titania, indeed, "squared" so, that—
"All their elves, for fear,
Crept into acorn-cups, and hid them there."