Wild Life in a Southern County

by Richard Jefferies

At that season (March) the cock birds have an irresistible inclination to do battle; they are ceaselessly challenging each other, and the fowler takes advantage of it to snare them. Now this man said that these chaffinches sold for 6 shillings the dozen, and that when the birds were ‘on,’ as he called it, he could catch five dozen a day. In a walk of four or five miles I passed half-a-dozen such fellows, with cages and stuffed chaffinches. This alone proves that cock chaffinches are very numerous in spring. Where, then, are they in winter, if the flocks of chaffinches at that period consist almost exclusively of female birds? Probably they fly in small bodies of three or four, or singly, and so escape observation. But this division of the sexes presents a curious resemblance to the social customs discovered amongst certain savages. During the winter the birds separate, and the females ‘pack.’ In the spring the males appear, and, after a period of fighting for the mastery, pair, and the nests are built. After the young are reared, song ceases, and the old haunts are deserted. This summer I was much struck with this partial migration, perhaps the more so because observed in a fresh locality.

During the spring and summer I daily followed a road for some three miles which I had found to pass through a district much-frequented by birds. The birch coppice so favoured by nightingales was that way; and, by the bye, the wrynecks were almost equally numerous; and the question has occurred to me whether these birds are companions, in a sense, of the nightingale, having noticed them in other places to be much together. All spring and summer the hedges, coppices, brakes, thickets, furze lands, and cornfields abounded with bird life. About the middle of August there was a notable decrease. Early in September the places previously so populous seemed almost deserted; by the middle of the month quite deserted.

There were no chaffinches in the elms or in the road, and scarcely a sparrow; not a yellowhammer on the hedge by the cornfield; only a very few greenfinches; not a single bullfinch or goldfinch. Blackbirds, thrushes, and robins alone remained. The way to find what birds are about is to watch one of their favourite drinking and bathing-places; then it is easy to see which are absent. Where had all these birds gone to? In the middle of the fields of stubble there were flocks of sparrows—almost innumerable sparrows—and some finches, but not, apparently, enough to account for all that had left the hedges and trees. That may be explained by their being scattered over so many broad acres—miles of arable land being open to them.

But the migration from the hedgerows was very marked. They became quite empty and silent about the middle of September. This state of things continued for little more than a week—meaning the absolute silence—then a bird or two appeared in places at long intervals. They now came back rapidly, till, on the 28th, the ‘fink, chink’ of the finches sounded almost as merrily as before. The greenfinches flew from tree to tree in parties of four, six, or more, calling to each other in their happy confidential way. On that day the trees and hedges seemed to become quite populous again with finches. The sparrows, too, were busy in the roads once more. For a week previously every now and then a single lark might be heard singing for a few minutes: they had been silent before. On the 28th half-a-dozen could be heard singing at once, and now and then a couple might be seen chasing each other as if full of gaiety. It was indeed almost like a second spring: at the same time a few buttercups bloomed, to add to the illusion.

This migration of the finches from the hedgerows out into the fields, and their coming back, is very striking. It may possibly be connected with the phenomenon of ‘packing;’ for they seem to go away by twos and threes, to disappear gradually, but to return almost all at once, and in parties or flocks. The number in the flocks varies a great deal: it is a common opinion that it depends on the weather, and that in hard winters, when the cold is severe and prolonged, the flocks are much larger. Wood-pigeons are seldom, it is said, seen in great flocks till the winter is advanced.

Has the date of the harvest any influence upon the migration of birds? The harvest in some counties is, of course, much earlier than in others—a fact of which the itinerant labourer takes advantage, following the wave of ripening grass and corn. By the time they have mown the grass or reaped the wheat, as the case may be, in one county, the crops are ripe in another, to which they then wend their way.

One of the very earliest counties, perhaps, is Surrey. The white bloom of the blackthorn seems to show there a full fortnight earlier than it does on the same line of latitude not many miles farther west. The almond trees exhibit their lovely pink blossom; the pears bloom, and presently the hawthorn comes out into full leaf, when a degree of longitude to the west the hedges are bare and only just showing a bud. Various causes probably contribute to this—difference of elevation, difference of soil, and so forth. Now the spring visitors—as the cuckoo, the swallow, and wryneck—appear in Surrey considerably sooner than they do farther west. The cuckoo is sometimes a full week earlier. It would seem natural to suppose that the more forward state of vegetation in that county has something to do with the earlier appearance of the bird. But I should hesitate to attribute it entirely to that cause, for it sometimes happens that birds act in direct opposition to what we should consider the most eligible course.

For instance, the redwing is one of our most prominent winter visitors. Flocks of redwings and fieldfares are commonly seen during the end of the season. They come as winter approaches, they leave as it begins to grow warm. In every sense they are birds of passage: any ploughboy will tell you so. (By-the-by, the ploughboys call the fieldfares ‘velts.’ Is not ‘velt’ a Northern word for field?) But one spring—it was rapidly verging on summer—I was struck day after day by hearing a loud, sweet but unfamiliar note in a certain field. Fancying that most bird notes were known to me, this new song naturally arrested my attention. In a little while I succeeded in tracing it to an oak tree. I got under the oak tree, and there on a bough was a redwing singing with all his might. It should be remarked that neither redwing nor fieldfare sings during the winter; they of course have their ‘call’ and cry of alarm, but by no stretch of courtesy could it be called a song. But this redwing was singing—sweet and very loud, far louder than the old familiar notes of the thrush. The note rang out clear and high, and somehow sounded strangely unfamiliar among English meadows and English oaks.

Then, looking farther and watching about the hedges there, I soon found that the bird was not alone—there were three or four pairs of redwings in close neighbourhood, all evidently bent upon remaining to breed. To make quite sure, I shot one. Afterwards I found a nest, and had the pleasure of seeing the young birds come to maturity and fly.

Nothing could be more thoroughly opposed to the usual habits of the bird. There may be other instances recorded, but what one sees oneself leaves so much deeper an impression. The summer that followed was a very fine one. It is instances like this that make one hesitate to dogmatise too much as to the why and wherefore of bird-ways. Yet it is just the speculation as to that why and wherefore which increases the pleasure of observing them.