Fig. 71.
The song of birds must be the expression of some sentiment; they surely sing as much for their own pleasure as to charm those who listen to them. While they fill the woods with their melodious accents they direct their looks on all sides, as if proud of their talents, and desirous of gathering the tribute of admiration to which they feel themselves entitled. Their song varies with the season, but it is in the early spring their efforts are the most successful, and we are most disposed to admire the beauty and harmony of their voices. Can anything be more delicious than the warbling of the Linnet, the piping of the Goldfinch, slowly swelling from their leafy bower, or the melodious cadence of the Nightingale, as it breaks the silence of the woodland during the serene nights of leafy June?
Our landscape would be sad and mute indeed without these graceful inhabitants of the air, which give so much animation to country life and solitary rambles. In the silence of night, when all nature sleeps and life seems suspended, all at once certain notes of harmony rise from under the dense foliage, as if to protest against the universal silence. It is sometimes a plaintive cry, prolonged into a stifled sigh, now a continuous warbling, now a lively song, gay and melodious, which the whole forest re-echoes to.
When the darkness of night gives place to the first dawn of day—when the soft gleam of Aurora has appeared on the horizon, all is transformed, all is vivified on the new-born earth, lately asleep and apparently deserted. The larger birds rise higher and higher in the air, till they are lost in the clouds. The small birds hop from branch to branch with joyous gambols, communicating a movement of happiness and content over all nature. What a wonderful variety of music issues from them—what dazzling brilliancy and variety deck their plumage—what a charm pervades the whole scene, enlivened by these living flowers flitting about in intense enjoyment, hovering, traversing, and embellishing the air! Be it a Titmouse, which seems to spend its life suspended from the branch of a tree; or the Fly Catcher, on the other hand, always perched; the Lark, performing its graceful circles in the air as it rises higher and higher, pouring forth its melodious song more vigorously with each circle described; the Thrush, which runs along the grassy path, watching for its prey, or the House Sparrow chirping from the straw-built roof, or the Robin warbling from some leafless bower—how completely the little winged wanderers decorate the landscape and improve the picture with their innocent gambols!
Assuredly birds have a language which they alone comprehend. When danger threatens them, a particular cry is uttered by one, and immediately all of the same species hide themselves until their fears are dispelled and confidence restored. When the presence of a bird of prey is announced by the plaintive cry of the Thrush, all the feathered race of the neighbourhood are hushed into silence.
Birds of prey with carnivorous instincts live in the most solitary places. The Eagle lives alone with his mate in some unapproachable aerie, his nest placed on the side of some steeply-scarped mountain, or perhaps hidden in the depth of some inaccessible ravine, whence they sally forth to visit some distant region in search of prey.
It is very difficult for us to appreciate the degree of intelligence exhibited by birds. In the Mammifers, whose organisation approaches nearer to that of man, we are enabled partially to comprehend their joys and griefs; but in the case of birds we are reduced to conjecture in order to arrive at an estimate of their sensations. To explain this profound mystery a word has been invented which satisfies easy minds: we call the sentiment which leads birds to perform many admirable actions which are related of them, instinct. The tenderness of the mother for her young—a tenderness so full of delicacy and foresight—is, we say, only the result of instinct. It is agreed on all hands, however, that this instinct singularly resembles the intelligence called reason, and, in the opinion of many, is nothing else.
Reproduction in birds occurs at intervals regulated by nature, and they are distinguished, above all other creatures, for the fidelity of their affections. It is frequently a matter of observation that a male attaches itself to a female, and they henceforth live together till the death of one or both; and many affecting scenes are described where death has overtaken one of the affectionate pair. When the breeding season approaches, the habits of the female are modified; she abandons her former freedom, and, having laid her eggs, she passes her whole time in incubation, defying hunger and all other dangers, apparently well instructed in the fact that the equal and prolonged heat communicated by their contact with her body is necessary to hatch them. During the period of incubation the male, in most instances, watches the female, and supplies her with food; afterwards the little ones are waited on by both the parent birds with the tenderest care until they finally attain the use of their wings.
The solicitude of birds for their young is first manifested in the choice of the locality for the nest, and in the care with which this cradle of their progeny is constructed. But all this disappears when the young no longer require the maternal protection.