Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

Seeing him start, the rest follow at once, jealous lest he should enjoy these pleasures alone. As he flies every few minutes he closes his wings, so that for half a dozen yards he shoots like an arrow through the air; then rapidly uses them, and again closes and shoots forward, all the timekeeping a level straight course; going direct to his object.

The starlings that breed in the roof, though they leave the place later on and congregate in flocks roosting in trees, still come back now and then to revisit their homes, especially as the new year opens, when they alight on the house frequently and consult on the approaching important period of nesting. If you should be sitting near a window close under the roof where they are busy, reading a book, with the summer sunshine streaming in, now and then a flash like lightning will pass across the page. It is a starling rapidly vibrating his wings before he perches on the thatch; the swift succession of light and shadow as the wings intercept the rays of the sun causes an impression on the eye like that left by a flash of lightning. They are beautiful birds: on their plumage, when seen quite close, the light plays in iridescent gleams.

Upon the roof of the old farmstead, too, the chirp of the sparrow never ceases the livelong day. It is amusing to see these birds in the nesting season carrying up long straws—towing their burden through the air with evident labour—or feathers. These they sometimes drop just as they arrive at their destination. Eager to utter a chirp to their mates, they open their beaks, and away floats the feather, but they catch it again before it reaches the ground. Fluffy feathers are great favourites. The fowls, as they fly up to roost on the beams in the sheds, beat out feathers from their clumsy wings; these lie scattered on the ground, marking the spot. These roosting-places are magazines from which the small birds draw their supplies for domestic purposes. The sparrows have their nests in lesser holes in the thatch: sometimes they use a swallow’s nest built of mortar under the eaves, to which the owners have not returned.

The older folk still retain some faint superstitions about swallows, looking upon them as semi-consecrated and not to be killed or interfered with. They will not have their nests knocked down. If they do not return to the eaves but desert their nests it is a sign of misfortune impending over the household. So, too, if the rooks quit the rookery or the colonies of bees in the hives on the sunny side of the orchard decay and do not swarm, but seem to die off, it is an evil omen. If at night a bird flutters against the window-pane in the darkness—as they will sometimes in a great storm of wind, driven, perhaps, from their roosting-places by the breaking of the boughs, and attracted by a light within—the knocking of their wings betokens that something sad is about to happen. If an invalid asks for a pigeon—taking a fancy to a dish of pigeons to eat—it is a sign either of coming dissolution or of extreme illness.

But the swallows rarely fail to come in the spring, and soon begin to repair their nests or build new ones with mortar from the roads; a rainy day is very useful to them, and they alight at the edge of the puddles, finding the mud already mixed and tempered for them there. In such weather they will fly backwards and forwards by the side of a hedge for a length of time, skimming just above the grass, when, looking down on them instead of up at them, the white bar across the lower part of the body just before the tail forks is very noticeable. The darker feathers have a glossy bluish tinge on the black. They seem fond of flying round and near horses and cattle, as if insects were more numerous near animals. While driving on a sultry day I have watched a swallow follow the horse for a mile or more.

It is a pleasant sight to watch them gliding just above the surface of smooth water, dipping every now and then. Once, while observing some swallows flying over a lake, on a windy day, when there were waves of some size, I saw a swallow struck by the crest of a wave and overwhelmed. It was about twenty yards from a lee shore, and the bird floated on the water, rising and sinking with the waves till they threw it on the bank. It was much exhausted, but when placed on a stone in the warm sunshine soon recovered and flew off.

As another proof that quick as they are on the wing, they do not always judge their position or course precisely, I know a case where a swallow, in less than ten yards after leaving her nest under the eaves of a house, flew with great force against a door in the garden wall painted a dull blue. The beak was partly broken and the bird completely stunned: she died in a few minutes. There was some one in the garden close by at the time: his presence may have frightened the swallow; yet they are not usually timid where their nests are undisturbed. Perhaps in her hurry the dull blue colour of the gate may have deceived her sight; but she must have travelled that way a hundred times before.

Swallows frequently come down the great chimneys at the farmhouse and are found in the rooms, but are always allowed to escape from the window. Swallows are said not to perch; but I have seen them repeatedly perch on those sticks which, where the thatch has somewhat decayed, project a few inches above the roof-tree. Sometimes a row of half a dozen may be observed settled on the roof here. You may see them, too, perch on the topmost boughs of the tall damson trees in the orchard; and again, later in the autumn, after nesting is over, they assemble in hundreds—one might almost say thousands—in the withy bed by the brook, settling on the slender willow wands. There they twitter together for an hour or more every evening. They can rise without the slightest difficulty from the ground, if it is level and not encumbered with grass, as from the surface of the roads. On dull cold days they settle on the house more frequently than when it is bright and sunny.

At one end of the farmhouse, which is an irregular building, there is a quiet gable, and in it a casement arched over by the thatch, and shaded by a thick growth of ivy. The casement is low, and not more than eight or nine feet from the ground; the ivy has climbed the wall, it has spread too over the massive wall of the garden which just there abuts upon the house, so that there is a secluded corner formed by the angle. Here some time ago a number of logs of timber—oak, such as are sawn up into posts for field gateways—were left leaning half against the garden wall, half against the house, just under the window. There they have remained (there is never any hurry about things in the country) so long that the moss has begun to encase the lower portions. What with the projecting thatch, the thick ivy, the timber thrown carelessly beneath, the lichen-grown garden wall, and a large bush of lilac in the angle, the place could hardly be more quiet, and is consequently a favourite resort of the birds.

Within reach from the window the swallows have their nests, and the sparrows their holes, on the right hand; within reach on the left hand, among the ivy, the water-wagtail has built her nest year after year. The wagtail may always be seen about the place—now in the cow-yards among the cattle, now in the rickyard, and even close to the door of the dwelling-house, especially frequenting the courtyard in front of the dairy. As he flies he rises up and then sinks again, in a succession of undulations, now spreading the tail out and now closing it. On the ground he generally alights near water; he is continually jerking the tail up and down.