A Haunt of the Razor-Bill. [Face page 220.
CHAPTER XVII
NED’S TALE OF THE BIRDS
It was within a stone’s throw of the sea at Lamorna, that I sat and listened to Ned’s “Tale of the Birds.”
We had been fishing the trout-stream that empties itself into the cove, and were resting on the boulders near the bridge before turning homewards. Ned is a good all-round sportsman, but his knowledge of birds is remarkable, and the reason is not far to seek. His father was a taxidermist who was regarded as an authority on British birds by Rodd and by Gould. For some twenty years Ned assisted him in his work; but his delight was, and is, to wander over the country in search of sport and specimens. To this is, perhaps, chiefly due the knowledge he possesses of the avifauna of Cornwall.
To understand the birds of Cornwall, said he, you must know that, besides those always with us, and the migrants that reach us regularly in the spring and autumn, many kinds of wild-fowl visit us in hard winters and remain whilst the frost lasts. This corner of England, owing chiefly to the warm sea about it, is milder than any other except the Scilly Isles, and when birds are frozen out elsewhere, they can pick up a living here. A good feeding-ground is the Land’s End district—what with its beaches, its boggy ground and pools on the moors, and above all the overgrown, marshy valleys, which mostly run north and south, and are sheltered from the bitter east winds. Birds of gay plumage have been shot in these bottoms which you would expect to meet with only in a tropical forest—such as the hoopoe, the waxwing, the roller, the bee-eater, and the golden oriole. Of the four hundred birds comprised in the avifauna of the British Isles two hundred and ninety have been observed in Cornwall, so you see that our bird-life is as rich as the fish-life in the sea about the promontory, or the flora that makes the face of the country so beautiful.
Now it’s out of the question my attempting to talk about nearly three hundred different kinds of birds, so I’ll pick out a few things that may interest you. Look! that’s a starling on the cottage chimney, and I’ll begin with him. A few years ago you might search West Cornwall over without seeing one—I mean in the month of August, though they came in tens of thousands in the winter. I’ve seen the osier beds along the Eastern Green and the reeds at Marazion Marsh black with them; and when I was a boy I used to fire at passing flocks with a bow and arrow, as with a great whirr of wings they skimmed over the Well field on their way to roost. I believe that starlings have regular lines of flight, as they seldom failed to pass over that field about sundown. To come to the point, no sooner was winter over than they all went up-along; but now some remain all the year round, and breed. The cause is to be found, I believe, in the enormous increase of this bird.
Then the daws—I mean the jackdaws—are ever so much more numerous than they used to be. In my young days they were scarce, and I used to be let down over the cliffs with a rope round me, to get their eggs. Now you can see them everywhere, about the old mine-ruins, about the farmhouses, and even about the villages.
The green woodpecker is also more plentiful than it used to be. Considering how bare of trees the country is, this is perhaps more surprising than the increase of the starling or the daw. It is true that some new plantations, such as those at Tregavara and Bijowans, are growing up, and who can say but that in time we shall have jays and nightingales, and perhaps squirrels?