The country-people say that the “tinner,” that is the “dishwasher” or water-wagtail, is scarcer than it was before the blizzard, which must have caused the death of tens of thousands of birds. They call it the tinner, because it builds its nest in the mouth of the old mine-shafts.
Now I’ll tell you about the last Cornish choughs I ever saw alive. It was away on the Rinsey Cliffs, a lone place between Pra Sands and Porthleven; and of course I wanted to get them. I had a gun with me—as indeed I always had, for there was no close season in those days. The birds were on a splat of fine turf near the edge of the cliff, and within gunshot of an old engine-house that lay beyond them. There was no chance of my getting near enough to these birds—shy as hawks through persecution—not even by crawling; for the surface was nearly as smooth as a bowling-green, with only a patch of vernal squill here and there. Lying in a dip of the ground, and all hidden up to my eyes, I could see every movement of the two birds—a cock and a hen they were—and more, I could hear every note they uttered. “Daw, daw,” they kept calling, a kind of bleat, a pitiful little cry I should call it; and yet I wanted to kill them both. Instead of getting closer to me, as I hoped, they were, if anything, moving nearer to the engine-house. Then, thinks I, why not get round and come at them from behind the building. This I set out to do, making a long circuit, and at last the ruin lay between me and them. I reached it without having seen the birds fly away, though I could no longer hear them calling. All of a tremble with excitement, and with the gun at full cock, I crept through a hole in the wall, made my way round the edge of the shaft, and peeped through a chink in the wall opposite. No choughs could I see. They were gone; and I was disappointed, sir, I can tell ee. I went to the edge of the cliff, and looked down. Not a bird was to be seen; nothing but a few shags on the rocks in the white water. As I said, I never saw a chough alive again. They were, I believe, the last of their race. It’s a pity they’re extinct. Handsome birds I call them, with their black glossy plumage and vermilion bill and legs. I can hear that “daw, daw” now as I sit here; plaintive it was for a love-note.
I forgot to say that the magpie is more common than it used to be, though the farm boys “strub” every nest they can find. Interesting birds I call them, and a feature of the country, a homely feature, like the pigeons I saw about the Abbey up in London, only wilder.
Yes, a magpie on a wind-clipt thorn bush, a yellow-hammer on a furze spray, gulls behind a ploughshare, a cormorant on a rock in the green water, and jackdaws about a broken mine-stack, are pictures downright Cornish; and they are always with us.
Dear me, how everything comes back when you begin to talk.
If anything would make me laugh again, it would be what I once saw at Nancothan. I was looking through a window of the farmhouse into the orchard. Perhaps it was the peculiar behaviour of a magpie that attracted my attention. There he was with his neck drawn out and head thrown back, making tremendous thrusts with his beak at something on the ground. After lunging two or three times, he turned his head on one side and looked at whatever lay there, first with one eye, then turning his head, with the other. It’s a comical sight is a magpie looking with one eye at anything. Well then, he began to dig, dig again, and after a final critical examination with each eye, flew up into an apple-tree. I ran out to see what he had been pecking at so vigorously. What do you think I found? why, a china nest-egg! I see that it amuses you, sir, as it used to amuse me. It’s the funniest thing in bird-life I ever saw.
The Home of the Cormorant. [Face page 226.