In a Cheshire Garden: Natural History Notes

by Geoffrey Egerton-Warburton

For three days in the end of July, 1905, I was able from my study window to watch a young cuckoo being fed by its foster-parent, a meadow-pipit. The cuckoo was sitting on a wire fence on the opposite bank. At first it sat in a floppy kind of way, with its wings hanging down on either side, as if to keep its balance, but the next day it seemed to have gained strength and sat up better. The little pipit (if it was always the same, and I never saw more than one at once) was not away for more than a minute or two, except on the third day, when it was pouring wet and food seemed harder to find. As soon as the cuckoo knew that its nurse was coming it began opening its mouth and quivering its wings, while the poor little dupe that brought the food would alight a short distance off and run along the wire to its side, then, looking ridiculously small for the job, it would manage to pop something into its mouth, not all in one go, but in two or three. It was curious to notice that every time after being fed the ungrateful cuckoo gave spiteful pecks at the poor deluded little slave who was working so hard to supply its wants.

One day in May (1908) a cuckoo alighted on a tree close to the house, attended by two small birds. He seemed rather uneasy in their company, and kept looking suspiciously at them; they, I fancy, were trying to make up their minds to attack him, but they let "I dare not" wait so long upon "I would" that he went off unmolested.

Barn owls are comparatively common. Farmers are learning to understand better their great usefulness, and at least to leave them alone. Some, indeed, do more than this, and I know of two cases where the pigeon cote in the hay-loft has been given up to them. Through the back door of one of these cotes I have been able to see at my ease the funny little round-faced hissing young ones, and I was quite surprised to find how very long it is before the fully-fledged birds turn out of the nest. My friend at Heatley was one of those who entertained the owls, and he told me that if an old bird accidentally dropped a mouse as he made his way into the loft, he never by any chance attempted to recover it. He said he used on winter evenings to see the owls fly along the eaves of the neighbouring houses and inside the roof of a hayshed close by, beating with their wings to drive out the sparrows that were roosting there, and he found the remains of a great many sparrows in their casts.

A barn-owl appeared in the garden one day in May, 1899. It did all it could to hide itself in the bushes and thick Scotch firs, but in spite of its efforts the birds in the neighbourhood, led on apparently by the blackbirds, found it out again and again, and kept up a ceaseless noise and commotion as long as it was here. (I noticed that the fowls, both cocks and hens, joined in the general clamour.) In December, however, I have seen an owl fly into one of the out-houses in the middle of the day, and even sit calmly in full view on a leafless tree without attracting the least notice from any bird.

The keeper tells me that brown, long-eared, and short-eared owls are all to be found in Warburton at times, brown owls nesting here regularly.

Sparrow hawks come to us occasionally, but not so often as kestrels. The difference in the behaviour of small birds with regard to these two hawks is remarkable, and plainly shows that they have, as a rule, little to fear from kestrels. One November day, for instance, a sparrow hawk appeared in a tree just opposite my window, causing the greatest commotion and consternation among sparrows and all other birds. A week later a kestrel came to the same place at the same time of the day and stayed about for a considerable time, but none of the small birds took the least notice of him.

My friend at Heatley, who used to have the owls as his tenants, once (in 1897) shot a sparrow hawk near his house that had a screaming blackbird in his talons, and was tearing off from its back strips of feathers and flesh together without apparently having tried to kill it first. He told me that twice he had seen a lark escape from a sparrow hawk. In both instances the lark's idea seemed to be to rise higher than the hawk, and the two kept going up together. The hawk made repeated stoops at his quarry, but each time he missed, the lark striking now to the right and now to the left. The contest ended in both cases by the lark dashing down to cover from a great height; one time it found refuge among the shrubs in a garden, and on the second occasion it came down faster than he could describe with its wings closed against its sides, and just slanting over the tops of some fruit trees opposite, dashed straight into the kitchen. To do this it had to pass through the sliding door of the back-kitchen, which was not more than two feet open, and then through the open door of the kitchen. Strange to say, it was able to check its speed sufficiently to alight uninjured on the floor, though utterly exhausted and helpless. My friend picked it up, and having held it for some minutes in his hand, let it fly away seeming none the worse for its perilous adventure. The hawk, he said, sailed calmly once or twice round the house before he took himself off.

The following is part of a letter I received in November, 1894:—"A sparrow hawk took up his nightly abode on the transome of the top light of a window in Arley Chapel in the autumn of 1890, and remained constant to that roosting place until, at all events, May, 1892, when we left Arley. How long it stayed there after we left I cannot say, but I was told last winter that it had disappeared. The hawk was always solitary; I never saw it with a companion. The roost was always exactly on the same stone."

One has heard stories of other birds living the same kind of lonely existence, but I never saw a very satisfactory explanation as to how it is that they come to do so. The pairing instinct is strong in birds, and it must be a powerful motive that makes them disregard it. We are told that if a bird of prey loses its mate it does not take it long to find another. May we suppose that solitary birds like this at Arley are waiting in readiness for such an emergency? Or is such a bird simply one that, being old and cantankerous, is bored by female society, or feels himself unequal to the cares of a family?

All birds seem to give a sparrow hawk a wide berth, but one often sees a kestrel pursued, most frequently perhaps by a rook, but sometimes by a peewit or a gull. In October, 1908, I saw from the garden a kestrel persecuted by two rooks. He kept dodging their attacks, but didn't seem to mind them much and never turned on them. Again, at the end of October, 1906, I was watching a kestrel as it hovered over a field close by, when I saw it suddenly and violently assaulted by a missel-thrush. It gave way for some space, but when in a minute or two the thrush flew off, it returned to its first position and continued hovering just as if never interrupted.