Birds and Man

by W. H. Hudson

About two miles from Frensham ponds there is a plantation of fir-trees with a good deal of gorse growing scattered about among the trees; in walking through this wood on previous occasions I had noticed that gold-crests were abundant in it. Soon after sunset on the evening in question I went through this wood, and after going about eighty to a hundred yards became conscious of a commotion of a novel kind in the branches above my head—conscious too that it had been going on for some time, and that absorbed in thought I had not remarked it. A considerable number of gold-crests were flitting through the branches and passing from tree to tree, keeping over and near me, all together uttering their most vehement cries of alarm. I stopped and listened to the little chorus of shrill squeaking sounds, and watched the birds as well as I could in the obscurity of the branches, flitting about in the greatest agitation. It was perfectly clear that I was the cause of the excitement, as the birds increased in number as long as I stood at that spot, until there could not have been less than forty or fifty, and when I again walked on they followed. One expects to be mobbed and screamed at by gulls, terns, lapwings, and some other species, when approaching their nesting-places, but a hostile demonstration of this kind from such minute creatures as gold-crests, usually indifferent to man, struck me as very unusual and somewhat ridiculous. What, I asked myself, could be the reason of their sudden alarm, when my previous visits to the wood had not excited them in the least? I could only suppose that I had, without knowing it, brushed against a nest, and the alarm note of the parent birds had excited the others and caused them to gather near me, and that in the obscure light they had mistaken me for some rapacious animal. The right explanation (I think it the right one) was found by chance three months later.

In August I was in Ireland, staying at a country house among the Wicklow hills. There were several swallows' nests in the stable, one or two so low that they could be reached by the hand, and the birds went in and out regardless of the presence of any person. In a few days the young were out, sitting in rows on the roof of the house or on a low fence near it, where their parents fed them for a short time. After these young birds were able to take care of themselves they still kept about the house, and were joined by more swallows and martins from the neighbourhood. One bright sunny morning, when not fewer than two or three score of these birds were flying about the house, gaily twittering, I went into the garden to get some fruit. All at once a swallow uttered his loud shrill alarm cry overhead and at the same time darted down at me, almost grazing my hat, then mounting up he continued making swoops, screaming all the time. Immediately all the other swallows and martins came to the spot, joining in the cry, and continued flying about over my head, but not darting at me like the first bird. For some moments I was very much astonished at the attack; then I looked round for the cat—it must be the cat, I thought. This animal had a habit of hiding among the gooseberry bushes, and, when I stooped to pick the fruit, springing very suddenly upon my back. But pussy was nowhere near, and as the swallow continued to make dashes at me, I thought that there must be something to alarm it on my head, and at once pulled off my hat and began to examine it. In a moment the alarm cries ceased and the whole gathering of swallows dispersed in all directions. There was no doubt that my hat had caused the excitement; it was of tweed, of an obscure grey colour, striped or barred with dark brown. Throwing it down on the ground among the bushes it struck me that its colour and markings were like those of a grey striped cat. Any one seeing it lying there would, at the first moment, have mistaken it for a cat lying curled up asleep among the bushes. Then I remembered that I had been wearing the same delusive, dangerous-looking round tweed fishing-hat on the occasion of being mobbed by the gold-crests at Frensham. Of course the illusion could only have been produced in a bird looking down upon the top of the hat from above.

CHAPTER III

DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY

Daws are more abundant in the west and south-west of England generally than in any other part of the kingdom; and they abound most in Somerset, or so it has seemed to me. It is true that the largest congregations of daws in the entire country are to be seen at Savernake in Wiltshire, where the ancient hollow beeches and oaks in the central parts of the forest supply them with all the nesting holes they require. There is no such wood of old decaying trees in Somerset to attract them to one spot in such numbers, but the country generally is singularly favourable to them. It is mainly a pastoral country with large areas of rich, low grass land, and ranges of high hills, where there are many rocky precipices such as the daw loves. For very good reasons he prefers the inland to the sea-cliff as a breeding site. It is, to begin with, in the midst of his feeding ground, whereas the sea-wall is a boundary to a feeding ground beyond which the bird cannot go. Better still, the inland bird has an immense advantage over the other in travelling to and from his nest in bad weather. When the wind blows strong from the sea the seaside bird must perpetually fight against it and win his home by sheer muscular exertion. The other bird, able to go foraging to this side or that, according to the way the wind blows, can always have the wind as a help instead of a hindrance.

Somerset also possesses a long coast-line and some miles of sea-cliffs, but the colonies of jackdaws found here are small compared with those of the Mendip range. The inland-cliff breeding daws that inhabit the valley of the Somerset Axe alone probably greatly outnumber all the daws in Middlesex, or Surrey, or Essex.

Finally, besides the cliffs and woods, there are the old towns and villages—small towns and villages with churches that are almost like cathedrals. No county in England is richer in noble churches, and no kind of building seems more attractive to the "ecclesiastical daw" than the great Perpendicular tower of the Glastonbury type, which is so common here.

Of the old towns which the bird loves and inhabits in numbers, Wells comes first. If Wells had no birds it would still be a city one could not but delight in. There are not more than half a dozen towns in all the country where (if I were compelled to live in towns) life would not seem something of a burden; and of these, two are in Somerset—Bath and Wells. Of the former something will be said further on: Wells has the first place in my affections, and is the one town in England the sight of which in April and early May, from a neighbouring hill, has caused me to sigh with pleasure. Its cathedral is assuredly the loveliest work of man in this land, supremely beautiful, even without the multitude of daws that make it their house, and may be seen every day in scores, looking like black doves perched on the stony heads and hands and shoulders of that great company of angels and saints, apostles, kings, queens, and bishops, that decorate the wonderful west front. For in this building—not viewed as in a photograph or picture, nor through the eye of the mere architect or archaeologist, who sees the gem but not the setting—nature and man appear to have worked together more harmoniously than in others.

But it is hard to imagine a birdless Wells. The hills, beautiful with trees and grass and flowers, come down to it; cattle graze on their slopes; the peewit has its nest in their stony places, and the kestrel with quick-beating wings hangs motionless overhead. Nature is round it, breathing upon and touching it caressingly on every side; flowing through it like the waters that gave it its name in olden days, that still gush with noise and foam from the everlasting rock, to send their crystal currents along the streets. And with nature, in and around the rustic village-like city, live the birds. The green woodpecker laughs aloud from the group of old cedars and pines, hard by the cathedral close—you will not hear that woodland sound in any other city in the kingdom; and the rooks caw all day from the rookery in the old elms that grow at the side of the palace moat. But the cathedral daws, on account of their numbers, are the most important of the feathered inhabitants of Wells. These city birds are familiarly called "Bishop's Jacks," to distinguish them from the "Ebor Jacks," the daws that in large numbers have their home and breeding-place in the neighbouring cliffs, called the Ebor Rocks.