This is the most pleasant and the best way to observe—to have an object, when so many things will be seen that would have been passed unnoticed. To steal softly along the hedgerow, keeping out of sight as much as possible, pausing now and then to listen as the 'coo-coo' is approached; and then, when near enough to see the doves, to remain quiet behind a tree, is the surest way to see everything else. The thrush will not move from her nest if passed so quietly; the chaffinch's lichen-made nest will be caught sight of against the elm-trunk—it would escape notice otherwise; the whitethroat may be watched in the nettles almost underneath; a rabbit will sit on his haunches and look at you from among the bare green stalks of brake rising; mice will rustle under the ground-ivy's purple flowers; a mole perhaps may be seen, for at this time they often leave their burrows and run along the surface; and, indeed, so numerous are the sights and sounds and interesting things, that you will soon be conscious of the fact that, while you watch one, two or three more are escaping you. It would be the same with any other search as well as the dove; I choose the dove because by then all the other creatures are come and are busy, and because it is a fairly large bird with a distinctive note, and consequently a good guide.
But these are not all the spring-birds: there are the whinchats, fly-catchers, sandpipers, ring-ousels, and others that are occasional or rare. There is not a corner of the fields, woods, streams, or hills, which does not receive a new inhabitant: the sandpiper comes to the open sandy margins of the pool; the fly-catcher, to the old post by the garden; the whinchat, to the furze; the tree-pipit, to the oaks, where their boughs overhang meadow or cornfield; the sedge-reedling, to the osiers; the dove, to the thick hedgerows; the wheatear, to the hills; and I see I have overlooked the butcher-bird or shrike, as, indeed, in writing of these things one is certain to overlook something, so wide is the subject. Many of the spring-birds do not sing on their first arrival, but stay a little while; by that time others are here. Grass-blade comes up by grass-blade till the meadows are freshly green; leaf comes forth by leaf till the trees are covered; and, like the leaves, the birds gently take their places, till the hedges are imperceptibly filled.
THE SPRING OF THE YEAR
'There's the cuckoo!' Everyone looked up and listened as the notes came indoors from the copse by the garden. He had returned to the same spot for the fourth time. The tallest birch-tree—it is as tall as an elm—stands close to the hedge, about three parts of the way up it, and it is just round there that the cuckoo generally sings. From the garden gate it is only a hundred yards to this tree, walking beside the hedge which extends all the way, so that the very first time the cuckoo calls upon his arrival he is certain to be heard. His voice travels that little distance with ease, and can be heard in every room. This year (1881) he came back to the copse on April 27, just ten days after I first heard one in the fields by Worcester Park. The difference in time is usual; the bird which frequents this copse does not arrive there till a week or so after others in the neighbourhood may be heard calling. So marked is the interval that once or twice I began to think the copse would be deserted—there were cuckoos crying all round in the fields, but none came near. He has, however, always returned, and this difference in time makes his notes all the more remarked. I have, therefore, always two dates for the cuckoo: one, when I first hear the note, no matter where, and the second, when the copse bird sings. When he once comes he continues so long as he stays in this country, visiting the spot every day, sometimes singing for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour, and one season he seemed to call every morning and all the morning long. In the copse the ring of the two notes is a little toned down and lost by passing through the boughs, which hold and check the vibration of the sound. One year a detached ash in Cooper's Field, not fifty yards from the houses, was a favourite resort, and while perched there the notes echoed along the buildings, one following the other as waves roll on the summer sands. Flying from the ash to the copse, or along the copse hedge, the cuckoo that year was as often seen as the sparrows, and as little notice was taken of him. Several times cuckoos have flown over this house, but just clearing the roof, and descending directly they were over to the copse. He has not called so much this year yet, but on the evening of May 8 he was crying in the copse at half-past eight while the moon was shining.
On the morning of May 2, standing in the garden, or at the window of any of the rooms facing south, you could hear five birds calling together. The cuckoo was calling not far from the tallest birch; there was a turtle-dove cooing in the copse much closer; and a wood-pigeon overpowered the dove's soft voice every two or three minutes—the pigeon was not fifty yards distant; a wryneck was perched up in an oak at the end of the garden, and uttered his peculiar note from time to time, and a nightingale was singing on Tolworth Common, just opposite the house, though on the other side. These were all audible, sometimes together, sometimes alternately; and if you went to the northern windows or the front door, looking towards the common, then you might also hear the chatter of a brook-sparrow. The dove has a way of gurgling his coo in the throat. The wryneck's 'kie-kie-kie,' the last syllable plaintively prolonged, is not like the call or songs of other birds; it reminds one of the peacock's strange scream, not in its actual sound, but its singularity. When it is suddenly heard from the midst of the thick green hedges of a summer's day, the bird itself unseen, it has a weird sound, which does not accord, like the blackbird's whistle, with our trees; it seems as if some tropical bird had wandered hither. I have heard the wryneck calling in the oak at the end of the garden every morning this season before rising, and suspect, from his constant presence, that a nest will be built close by. Last year the wryneck was a scarce bird in this neighbourhood; in all my walks I heard but two or three, and at long intervals. This year there are plenty; I hear them in almost every walk I take. There is one in the orchard beside the Red Lion Inn; another frequents the hedges and trees behind St. Matthew's Church; up Claygate Lane there is another—the third or fourth gateway on the left side is the place to listen. One year a pair built, I am sure, close to the cottage which stands by itself near the road on Tolworth Common. I saw them daily perched on the trees in front, and heard them every time I passed. There were not many, or we did not notice them, at home, and therefore I have observed them with interest. Now there is one every morning at the end of the garden. This nightingale, too, that sings on Tolworth Common just opposite, returns there every year, and, like the cuckoo to the copse, he is late in his arrival—at least a week later than other nightingales whose haunts are not far off. His cover is in some young birch-trees, which form a leafy thicket among the furze. On the contrary, the brook-sparrow, or sedge-reedling, that sings there is the first, I think, of all his species to return in this place. He comes so soon that, remembering the usual date in other districts, I have more than once tried to persuade myself that I was mistaken, and that it was not the sedge-bird, but some other. But he has a note that it is not possible to confuse, and as it has happened several seasons running, this early appearance, there can be no doubt it is a fixed period with him. These two, the sedge-bird and the nightingale, have their homes so near together that the one often sings in the branches above, while the other chatters in the underwood beneath.
Besides these, before I get up I hear now a wren regularly. Little as he is, his notes rise in a crescendo above all; he sings on a small twig growing from the trunk of an oak—a bare twig which gives him a view all round. There is a bold ring in some of the notes of the wren which might give an idea to a composer desirous of producing a merry tune. The chirp of sparrows, of course, underlies all. I like sparrows. The chirp has a tang in it, a sound within a sound, just as a piece of metal rings; there is not only the noise of the blow as you strike it, but a sound of the metal itself. Just now the cock birds are much together; a month or two since the little bevies of sparrows were all hens, six or seven together, as if there were a partial separation of the sexes at times. I like sparrows, and am always glad to hear their chirp; the house seems still and quiet after this nesting-time, when they leave us for the wheatfields, where they stay the rest of the summer. What happy days they have among the ripening corn!
But this year the thrushes do not sing: I have listened for them morning after morning, but have not heard them. They used to sing so continuously in the copse that their silence is very marked: I see them, but they are silent—they want rain. Nor have our old missel-thrushes sung here this spring. One season there seem more of one kind of bird, and another of another species. None are more constant than the turtle-dove: he always comes to the same place in the copse, about forty yards from the garden gate.
The wood-pigeons are the most prominent birds in the copse this year. In previous seasons there were hardly any—one or two, perhaps; sometimes the note was not heard for weeks. There might have been a nest; I do not think so; the pigeons that come seemed merely to rest en route elsewhere—occasional visitors only. But last autumn (1880) a small flock of seven or eight took up their residence here, and returned to roost every evening. They remained the winter through, and even in the January frosts, if the sun shone a little, called now and then. Their hollow cooing came from the copse at midday on January 1, and it was heard again on the 2nd. During the deep snows they were silent, but I constantly saw them flying to and fro, and immediately it became milder they recommenced to call. So that the wood-pigeon's notes have been heard in the garden—and the house—with only short intervals ever since last October, and it is now May. In the early spring, while walking up the Long Ditton road towards sunset, the place from whence you can get the most extended view of the copse, they were always flying about the tops of the trees preparatory to roosting. The bare slender tips of the birches on which they perched exposed them against the sky. Once six alighted on a long birch-branch, bending it down with their weight, not unlike a heavy load of fruit. As the stormy sunset flamed up, tinting the fields with momentary red, their hollow voices sounded among the trees.