Birds and their nests

by Mary Howitt

The Gardeners’ Enemy.

The missel-thrushes, however, as the year goes on, make for themselves enemies even more formidable than hawks or magpies; these are the gardeners. Towards the end of summer, when the young have flown, and they and the parent-birds congregate in large flocks, having then nothing to do but to enjoy themselves, like human families when children are all home for the holidays, they too go abroad on their excursions of pleasure; not, however, to sea-side watering places, but into gardens where the cherries and raspberries are ripe. Poor birds! Little aware of their danger, or if they be so, defiant of it in the greatness of the temptation, they make sad havoc amongst the fruit, and many unfortunates are shot or snared, and then hung up amidst the cherry-boughs or the raspberry-canes as a terror to their associates. It is a pity we cannot make them welcome to some and yet have enough left for ourselves.

The berries of the mountain-ash and the arbutus, and later on in the year those of the holly and ivy, supply them with food, as do also in the spring and summer insects of various kinds—caterpillars and spiders—so that in this respect they are good friends to the gardener, and might, one thinks, be made welcome to a little fruit in return.

CHAPTER XX.

THE YELLOW-HAMMER, OR YELLOW-HEAD.

This, though an extremely pretty bird, is so common that very little notice is taken of it. Its colours are varied and beautiful: the back and wings, bright red; the central part of each feather, brownish-black; the head and throat, bright yellow; the feathers of the upper part tipped with black; the breast, brownish-red. The colours of the female are much duller.

The yellow-hammer resembles linnets, finches, and sparrows in character and habits, and often associates with them, resorting to the fields in open weather, and often perching in hedges and bushes as well as in trees. In the winter, when the weather is severe, it congregates, with other birds, about houses, farm-buildings, and stack-yards.

One of the most pleasing features of autumn is, to my mind, these flocks of kindred birds, which are at that time all abroad and yet together, circling in their flight, all rising as you approach, and wheeling away into the stubble-field, or into the distant hedges, now rich with their wild fruits—the blackberry, the wild rose hip, and the bunches of black-privet berries—and then away again, as you approach, with their variously modulated notes, through the clear air into the yet more distant stubble or bean-field.

The flight of the yellow-hammer is wavy and graceful, and, alighting abruptly, he has a curious way of jerking out his tail feathers like a little fan. All at once a whole flock of them will descend from a considerable height and settle on the twigs of a tree, clothing it as with living leaves. Whatever number the flock may consist of, there is no impatient hurry or jostling among them to get the best perch, every individual settling as if on its own appointed place. As I have already observed, nothing is more charming at this season than these congregated companies of small birds. All the cares of life are now over, their young broods are around them, and now, with nothing to do but to enjoy themselves in the freedom of nature, where—on every hand, on every bush and tree, and in every outlying field—though the crops are now carried, all except, perhaps, here and there a solitary field in which the bean-shocks stand up black in the golden autumnal sunshine; but here, and there, and everywhere, a full table is spread, and they are welcome to enjoy.