Birds and Man

by W. H. Hudson

The Ebor daws are but the first of a succession of colonies extending along the side of the Cheddar valley. A curious belief exists among the people of Wells and the district, that the Ebor Jacks make better pets than the Bishop's Jacks. If you want a young bird you have to pay more for one from the rocks than from the cathedral. I was assured that the cliff bird makes a livelier, more intelligent and amusing pet than the other. A similar notion exists, or existed, at Hastings, where there was a saying among the fisher folks and other natives that "a Grainger daa is worth a ha'penny more than a castle daa." The Grainger rock, once a favourite breeding-place of the daws at that point, has long since fallen into the sea, and the saying has perhaps died out.

At Wells most of the cathedral birds—a hundred couples at least—breed in the cavities behind the stone statues, standing, each in its niche, in rows, tier above tier, on the west front. In April, when the daws are busiest at their nest-building, I have amused myself early every morning watching them flying to the front in a constant procession, every bird bringing his stick. This work is all done in the early morning, and about half-past eight o'clock a man comes with a barrow to gather up the fallen sticks—there is always a big barrowful, heaped high, of them; and if not thus removed the accumulated material would in a few days form a rampart or zareba, which would prevent access to the cathedral on that side.

It has often been observed that the daw, albeit so clever a bird, shows a curious deficiency of judg ment when building, in his persistent efforts to carry in sticks too big for the cavity. Here, for instance, each morning in turning over the litter of fallen material I picked up sticks measuring from four or five to seven feet in length. These very long sticks were so slender and dry that the bird was able to lift and to fly with them; therefore, to his corvine mind, they were suitable for his purpose. It comes to this: the daw knows a stick when he sees one, but the only way of testing its usefulness to him is to pick it up in his beak, then to try to fly with it. If the stick is six feet long and the cavity will only admit one of not more than eighteen inches, he discovers his mistake only on getting home. The question arises: Does he continue all his life long repeating this egregious blunder? One can hardly believe that an old, experienced bird can go on from day to day and year to year wasting his energies in gathering and carrying building materials that will have to be thrown away in the end—that he is, in fact, mentally on a level with the great mass of meaner beings who forget nothing and learn nothing. It is not to be doubted that the daw was once a builder in trees, like all his relations, with the exception of the cliff-breeding chough. He is even capable of reverting to the original habit, as I know from an instance which has quite recently come to my knowledge. In this case a small colony of daws have been noticed for several years past breeding in stick nests placed among the clustering foliage of a group of Scotch firs. This colony may have sprung from a bird hatched and reared in the nest of a carrion crow or magpie. Still, the habit of breeding in holes must be very ancient, and considering that the jackdaw is one of the most intelligent of our birds, one cannot but be astonished at the rude, primitive, blundering way in which the nest-building work is generally performed. The most we can see by carefully watching a number of birds at work is that there appears to be some difference with regard to intelligence between bird and bird. Some individuals blunder less than others; it is possible that these have learned something from experience; but if that be so, their better way is theirs only, and their young will not inherit it.

One morning at Wells as I stood on the cathedral green watching the birds at their work, I witnessed a rare and curious scene—one amazing to an ornithologist. A bird dropped a stick—an incident that occurred a dozen times or oftener any minute at that busy time; but in this instance the bird had no sooner let the stick fall than he rushed down after it to attempt its recovery, just as one may see a sparrow drop a feather or straw, and then dart down after it and often recover it before it touches the ground. The heavy stick fell straight and fast on to the pile of sticks already lying on the pavement, and instantly the daw was down and had it in his beak, and thereupon laboriously flew up to his nesting-place, which was forty to fifty feet high. At the moment that he rushed down after the falling stick two other daws that happened to be standing on ledges above dropped down after him, and copied his action by each picking up a stick and flying with it to their nests. Other daws followed suit, and in a few minutes there was a stream of descending and ascending daws at that spot, every ascending bird with a stick in his beak. It was curious to see that although sticks were lying in hundreds on the pavement along the entire breadth of the west front, the daws continued coming down only at that spot where the first bird had picked up the stick he had dropped. By and by, to my regret, the birds suddenly took alarm at something and rose up, and from that moment not one descended.

Presently the man came round with his rake and broom and barrow to tidy up the place. Before beginning his work he solemnly made the following remark: "Is it not curious, sir, considering the distance the birds go to get their sticks, and the work of carrying them, that they never, by any chance, think to come down and pick up what they have dropped!" I replied that I had heard the same thing said before, and that it was in all the books; and then I told him of the scene I had just witnessed. He was very much surprised, and said that such a thing had never been witnessed before at that place. It had a disturbing effect on him, and he appeared to me to resent this departure from their old ancient conservative ways on the part of the cathedral birds.

For many mornings after I continued to watch the daws until the nest-building was finished, without witnessing any fresh outbreak of intelligence in the colony: they had once more shaken down into the old inconvenient traditional groove, to the manifest relief of the man with the broom and barrow.

Bath, like Wells, is a city that has a considerable amount of nature in its composition, and is set down in a country of hills, woods, rocks and streams, and is therefore, like the other, a city loved by daws and by many other wild birds. It is a town built of white stone in the hollow of an oblong basin, with the river Avon flowing through it; and though perhaps too large for perfect beauty, it is exceedingly pleasant. Its "stone walls do not a prison make," since they do not shut you out from rural sights and sounds: walking in almost any street, even in the lowest part, in the busiest, noisiest centre of the town, you have but to lift your eyes to see a green hill not far away; and viewed from the top of one of these hills that encircle it, Bath, in certain favourable states of the atmosphere, wears a beautiful look. One afternoon, a couple of miles out, I was on the top of Barrow Hill in a sudden, violent storm of rain and wind; when the rain ceased, the sun burst out behind me, and the town, rain-wet and sun-flushed, shone white as a city built of whitest marble against the green hills and black cloud on the farther side. Then on the slaty blackness appeared a complete and most brilliant rainbow, on one side streaming athwart the green hill and resting on the centre of the town, so that the high, old, richly-decorated Abbey Church was seen through a band of green and violet mist. That storm and that rainbow, seen by chance, gave a peculiar grace and glory to Bath, and the bright, unfading picture it left in memory has perhaps become too much associated in my mind with the thought of Bath, and has given me an exaggerated idea of its charm.

When staying in Bath in the winter of 1898-9 I saw a good deal of bird life even in the heart of the town. At the back of the house I lodged in, in New King Street, within four minutes' walk of the Pump Room, there was a strip of ground called a garden, but with no plants except a few dead stalks and stumps and two small leafless trees. Clothes-lines were hung there, and the ground was littered with old bricks and rubbish, and at the far end of the strip there was a fowl-house with fowls in it, a small shed, and a wood-pile. Yet to this unpromising-looking spot came a considerable variety of birds. Starlings, sparrows, and chaffinches were the most numerous, while the blackbird, thrush, robin, hedge-sparrow and wren were each represented by a pair. The wrens lived in the wood-pile, and were the only members of the little feathered community that did not join the others at table when crumbs and scraps were thrown out.

It was surprising to find all or most of these birds evidently wintering on that small plot of ground in the middle of the town, solely for the sake of the warmth and shelter it afforded them, and the chance crumbs that came in their way. It is true that I fed them regularly, but they were all there before I came. Yet it was not an absolutely safe place for them, being much infested by cats, especially by a big black one who was always on the prowl, and who had a peculiarly murderous gleam in his luminous yellow orbs when he crouched down to watch or attempted to stalk them. One could not but imagine that the very sight of such eyes in that black, devilish face would have been enough to freeze their blood with sudden terror, and make them powerless to fly from him. But it was not so: he could neither fascinate nor take them by surprise. No sooner would he begin to practise his wiles than all the population would be up in arms—the loud, sharp summons of the blackbird sounding first; then the starlings would chatter angrily, the thrush scream, the chaffinches begin to pink-pink with all their might, and the others would join in, even the small hideling wrens coming out of their fortress of faggots to take part in the demonstration. Then puss would give it up and go away, or coil himself up and go to sleep on the sloping roof of the tiny shed or in some other sheltered spot; peace and quiet would once more settle on the little republic, and the birds would be content to dwell with their enemy in their midst in full sight of them, so long as he slept or did not watch them too narrowly.

Finding that blue tits were among the visitors at the back, I hung up some lumps of suet and a cocoa-nut to the twigs of the bushes. The suet was immediately attacked, but judging from the suspicious way in which they regarded the round brown object swinging in the wind, the Bath tits had never before been treated to a cocoa-nut. But though suspicious, it was plain that the singular object greatly excited their curiosity. On the second day they made the discovery that it was a new and delightful dish invented for the benefit of the blue tits, and from that time they were at it at all hours, coming and going from morning till night. There were six of them, and occasionally they were all there at once, each one anxious to secure a place, and never able when he got one to keep it longer than three or four seconds at a time. Looking upon them from an upper window, as they perched against and flitted round and round the suspended cocoa-nut, they looked like a gathering of very large pale-blue flies flitting round and feeding on medlar.