In spring, and again in autumn, wheatears pass through, and may be seen about for several days at a time. In April and May, 1908, a pair stayed so long in some rough ground near the bank of the Ship Canal that I thought they might be going to take up their quarters there for the season, but by May 31st they had disappeared.
We always have a fair number of whinchats in the meadows, and hardly a year passes without seeing them on the grass in the garden itself. One very wet summer, when in the low-lying lands the haycocks were standing for days surrounded by water, I remember being struck by the number of whinchats to be seen perching and chatting first on one haycock and then on another.
Though whinchats are so comparatively common, and their usual note, exactly like the knocking of two pebbles together, is constantly heard, their pretty little song, a cadence of a few notes repeated over and over again, I do not remember to have noticed here.
Only once have I seen a stonechat in the neighbourhood of this garden. This was in October, 1890. On the opposite side of the river the land had been raised by material excavated in the making of the Ship Canal, and was at that time wild and covered with a strong growth of all kinds of weeds. It was on a wire fence that ran along this bank that I saw the bright little bird. And there, with a curious pendulum-like movement of its tail, it continued to sit for a considerable time, giving me ample opportunity to study it leisurely through a field-glass.
Though redstarts are not uncommon in Dunham Park a few miles away, only once have I seen one in the garden, in August, 1894. It stayed for several days, and was never far away from the place where I first saw it. I noticed that other birds who are at home here, wagtails especially, seemed to look upon it as an interloper and resented its intrusion.
One of the first things that I remember about the natural history of Warburton is a brood of four white—or more strictly speaking, cream-coloured—robins that were hatched in a neighbouring garden in 1872. They were jealously watched over by the owner of the garden, and I often saw two of them until the autumn. Then they must either have been taken (and many people were after them) or have moulted to the ordinary robin colours, for we saw them no more.
Robins are plentiful in the garden and in the neighbourhood generally. They show much courage and skill in getting at the fat on the food-stand, no matter how greatly the difficulties of doing so may have been multiplied.
It has been said that robins have more power than most birds to see through the window into a room, and I certainly have observed that though as a rule neither robins nor tits take much notice if I am standing close by the window, yet sometimes a robin appears that will spy me out as I sit by the fire quite far away and be off in an instant. I have sometimes wondered if such wild robins might be immigrants from the Continent, where by all accounts they are less tame than in England.
Robins are pugnacious, and their duels are not unfrequently to the death. I have seen a robin pursue a sparrow and even fly straight at a great-tit and knock it off the food-stand, but I have noticed that generally a robin makes way for a sparrow, and seldom stands up to a tit of any kind, not even a marsh or a coal-tit, birds hardly half its size. I remember one, however, in the winter of 1900-01 who indiscriminately attacked all tits on the food-stand. He was very friendly with me, and used to watch as I filled the receptacles, when he would come close up and wait for a bit to be thrown to him, and often as he saw me coming he would sit on a corner of the porch roof and warble a little song of welcome. Another year (1901-02) two, sometimes three, and occasionally four, robins would be there together almost under my feet and ready to pick up anything I threw them. Very unlike most robins, they seemed on perfectly good terms with one another.
In November, 1905, a robin used to come into the house through the open windows and make himself quite at home; he would sometimes sit and sing on the bannisters in the hall.