Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

I think the same thing happens with rooks. The older rooks will only permit a few of their last year’s offspring to build near them. If a gentleman has an avenue of fine elm trees in which he desires to have a rookery, but cannot contrive to attract them, though perhaps now and then a nest is partly built and then deserted, an experiment founded on this idea might be tried. It would be necessary to ask the assistance of the proprietors of the nearest rookeries, and beg them for one year to refrain from shooting the young rooks, after the well-known custom. An unusual proportion of young birds would then survive, and next building season the larger part of these would return to the old trees and be immediately met in battle by their older relatives. Being driven away from the hereditary group of trees, they would resort to the next nearest avenue or grove; if they attempted to mix with a strange tribe, they would encounter a still fiercer resistance. In this way possibly the avenue in question might become stocked with rooks.

One reason, I fancy, why nests begun in such distant trees are so often deserted before completion is that a solitary nest exposes both the building birds and their prospective offspring to grave danger from hawks. No hawk will attempt to approach a rookery—the rooks would attack him en masse and easily put him to flight. Chickens are safer under or near a rookery from this cause: a hawk approaching them would alarm the rooks and be beaten away. The comparative safety afforded by numbers is perhaps a reason why many species of birds are gregarious. The apparently defenceless martins and swallows in this way dwell in some amount of security. If a hawk comes near the sand quarry (or the house—in the case of swallows) they all join together and pursue him, twittering angrily, and as a matter of fact generally succeed in sending him about his business. Even those birds which do not build in close contiguity no sooner find that a hawk is near than they rise simultaneously and follow and annoy him: so much so that he will sometimes actually drop the prey he has captured. It is astonishing with what temerity small birds, emboldened by numbers—chaffinches, finches generally, sparrows, swallows, and so on—will attack a hawk.

The ‘quar-martins’ that came to the orchard wall—emigrating from the quarry, and wandering about in search of a suitable habitation—if young birds, as we have supposed them to be, would naturally not yet have had much experience, and so might think the steep wall (roughly resembling the face of a quarry) available for their purpose till they had made the experiment. I have thought, from watching the motions of birds that go in flights, that most of them have a kind of leader or chief. They do not yield anything like the same obedience or reverence to the chief as the bees do to the queen-bee, and exhibit little traces of following his motions implicitly. He is more like the president of a republic; each member is individually free, and twitters his or her mind just as he or she likes. But it seems to be reserved to one bird to give the signal for all to move. So these martins, after lingering about the wall for hours—some of them, too, leaving it and flying away only to come back again—finally started altogether. It is difficult to account for such simultaneous and combined movements, unless we suppose that it is reserved to a certain bird to give the signal.

In the fork of a great apple tree—a Blenheim orange—the missel-thrush has built her nest. Missel-thrushes, doubtless of the same family, have used the tree for many years. Though the nest is large, the young birds as they grow up soon get too big for it and fall out. This period—just before the young can fly—is the most critical in their existence, and causes the greatest anxiety to the parents. Without the resource of flight, weak and unable even to scramble fast through the long grass, betraying their presence by continually crying for food, they are exposed to dangers from every species of vermin.

The missel-thrush is a bold, determined bird, and does his utmost in the defence of his offspring. When the young birds fall out of the nest (so soon as one has clambered over, the others quickly follow), the parents rarely leave the orchard together. One or other is almost always close at hand. If any enemy approaches they immediately set up an angry chattering, by which noise you may at once know what is going on. I have seen two missel-thrushes attack a crow in this way. The crow came and perched upon a bough within a yard of their nest, which contained young. The old birds were there immediately, and they so annoyed and buffeted the murderous robber that he left without achieving his fell purpose.

The cat is the worst enemy of the missel-thrush. It is noticeable that while these thrushes will attack anything that flies they are not so bold on the ground, but seem afraid to alight. They will strike even at the human hand that touches their nest. The crow, strong as he is, they courageously drive away; but the enemy that stealthily approaches along the ground to the helpless young bird in the grass they cannot resist. On the wing they can retreat quickly if pressed; on the ground they cannot move so swiftly, and may themselves fall a prey without affording any assistance. The missel-thrushes come to the orchard frequently after the nesting season is over and before it commences. They do not seem in search of food, but alight on the trees as if to view their property. They are strong on the wing, and fly direct to their object: there is something decided, courageous, and, as one might say, manly in their character.

The bark of some of the apple trees peels of itself—that is, the thin outer skin—and insects creep under these brown scales curled at the edges. If you sit down on the elm butt placed here as a seat and watch quietly, before long the little tree-climber will come. He flies to the trunk of the apple tree (other birds fly to the branches), and then proceeds to ascend it, going round it as he rises in a spiral. His claws cling tenaciously to the bark, his tail touches the tree, and seems to act as a support—like what I think the carpenters call a ‘knee’—and his head is thrown back so as to enable him to spy into every cranny he passes. After a few turns round the trunk he is off to another tree, to resume the same restless spiral ascent there; and in a minute or so off again to a third; for he never apparently examines one-half of the trunk, though, probably, his eyes, accustomed to the work, see farther than we may imagine. The orchard is never long without a tree-climber: it seems a favourite resort of these birds. They have a habit of rushing quickly a little way up; then pausing, and again creeping swiftly another, foot, or so, and are so absorbed in their pursuit that they are easily approached and observed.

Who can stay indoors when the goldfinches are busy among the bloom on the apple trees? A flood of sunshine falling through a roof of rosy pink and delicate white blossom overhead; underneath, grass deeply green with the vigour of spring, dotted with yellow buttercups, and strewn with bloom shaken by the wind from the trees: is not this better than formal-patterned carpets, and the white flat ceilings that weigh so heavily upon the sight? Listen how happy the goldfinches are in the orchard. Summer after summer they build in the same trees—bushy-headed codlings; generation after generation has been born there and gone forth to enjoy in turn the pleasures of the field.

A year—nay, a single summer—must be a long time in their chronology, for they are so very very busy: a bright sunshiny day must be like a month to them. Now coquetting, now splashing at the sandy edge of a shallow streamlet till the golden feathers glisten from the water and the red top-knot shines, away again along the hedgerow searching for seeds, singing all the while, and the tiny heart beating so rapidly as to compress twice as many beats of emotion into the minute as our sluggish organisations are capable of. Though a path much-frequented by the household passes beneath the trees in which they build, they show no fear.

Just as men from various causes congregate in particular places, so there are spots in the fields—in the country generally—which appear to specially attract birds of all kinds. Wide districts are almost bare of them: on a single farm you may often find a great meadow which scarcely seems to have a bird in it, while another little oddly-cornered field is populous with them. This orchard and garden at Wick is one of the favourite places. It is like one of those Eastern marts where men of fifty different nationalities, and picturesquely clad, jostle each other in the bazaars: so here feathered travellers of every species have a kind of leafy capital. When the nesting time is over the goldfinches quit the orchard, and only return for a brief call now and then. I almost think the finches have got regular caravan routes round and across the fields which they travel in small bands.