Birds and Man

by W. H. Hudson

To very many readers a description of the place would seem superfluous. They know it so well, even without having seen it; the little, old-world village at the foot of the long, steep, bank-like hill, or Hanger, clothed to its summit with beech-wood as with a green cloud; the straggling street, the Plestor, or village green, an old tree in the centre, with a bench surrounding its trunk for the elders to rest on of a summer evening. And, close by, the grey immemorial church, with its churchyard, its grand old yew-tree, and, overhead, the bunch of swifts, rushing with jubilant screams round the square tower.

I had not got the book in my knapsack, nor did I need it. Seeing the Selborne swifts, I thought how a century and a quarter ago Gilbert White wrote that the number of birds inhabiting and nesting in the village, summer after summer, was nearly always the same, consisting of about eight pairs. The birds now rushing about over the church were twelve, and I saw no others.

If Gilbert White had never lived, or had never corresponded with Pennant and Daines Barrington, Selborne would have impressed me as a very pleasant village set amidst diversified and beautiful scenery, and I should have long remembered it as one of the most charming spots which I had found in my rambles in southern England. But I thought of White continually. The village itself, every feature in the surrounding landscape, and every object, living or inanimate, and every sound, became associated in my mind with the thought of the obscure country curate, who was without ambition, and was "a still, quiet man, with no harm in him—no, not a bit," as was once said by one of his parishioners. There, at Selborne—to give an altered meaning to a verse of quaint old Nicholas Culpepper—

His image stampéd is on every grass.

With a new intense interest I watched the swifts careering through the air, and listened to their shrill screams. It was the same with all the birds, even the commonest—the robin, blue tit, martin, and sparrow. In the evening I stood motionless a long time intently watching a small flock of greenfinches settling to roost in a hazel-hedge. From time to time they became disturbed at my presence, and fluttering up to the topmost twigs, where their forms looked almost black against the pale amber sky, they uttered their long-drawn canary-like note of alarm. At all times a delicate, tender note, now it had something more in it—something from the far past—the thought of one whose memory was interwoven with living forms and sounds.

The strength and persistence of this feeling had a curious effect. It began to seem to me that he who had ceased to five over a century ago, whose Letters had been the favourite book of several generations of naturalists, was, albeit dead and gone, in some mysterious way still living. I spent a long time groping about in the long rank grass of the churchyard in search of a memorial; and this, when found, turned out to be a modest-sized headstone, and I had to go down on my knees, and put aside the rank grass that half covered it, just as when we look into a child's face we push back the unkempt hair from its forehead; and on the stone were graved the name, and beneath, "1793," the year of his death.

Happy the nature-lover who, in spite of fame, is allowed to rest, as White rests, pressed upon by no ponderous stone; the sweet influences of sun and rain are not kept from him; even the sound of the wild bird's cry may penetrate to his narrow apartment to gladden his dust!

Perhaps there is some truth in the notion that when a man dies he does not wholly die; that is to say, the earthly yet intelligent part of him, which, being of the earth, cannot ascend; that a residuum of life remains, like a perfume left by some long-vanished, fragrant object; or it may be an emanation from the body at death, which exists thereafter diffused and mixed with the elements, perhaps unconscious and yet responsive, or capable of being vivified into consciousness and emotions of pleasure by a keenly sympathetic presence. At Selborne this did not seem mere fantasy. Strolling about the village, loitering in the park-like garden of the Wakes, or exploring the Hanger; or when I sat on the bench under the churchyard yew, or went softly through the grass to look again at those two letters graved on the headstone, there was a continual sense of an unseen presence near me. It was like the sensation a man sometimes has when lying still with closed eyes of some one moving softly to his side. I began to think that if that feeling and sensation lasted long enough without diminishing its strength, it would in the end produce something like conviction. And the conviction would imply communion. Furthermore, between the thought that we may come to believe in a thing and belief itself there is practically no difference. I began to speculate as to the subjects about to be discussed by us. The chief one would doubtless relate to the bird life of the district. There are fresh things to be related of the cuckoo; how "wonder has been added to wonder" by observers of that bird since the end of the eighteenth century. And here is a delicate subject to follow—to wit, the hibernation of swallows—yet one by no possibility to be avoided. It would be something of a disappointment to him to hear it stated, as an established fact, that none of our hirundines do winter, fast asleep like dormice, in these islands. But there would be comfort in the succeeding declaration that the old controversy is not quite dead yet—that at least two popular writers on British birds have boldly expressed the belief that some of our supposed migrants do actually "lay up" in the dead season. The deep interest manifested in the subject would be a temptation to dwell on it. I should touch on the discovery made recently by a young English naturalist abroad, that a small species of swallow in a temperate country in the Southern Hemisphere shelters itself under the thick matted grass, and remains torpid during spells of cold weather. We have now a magnificent monograph of the swallows, and it is there stated of the purple martin, an American species, that in some years bitter cold weather succeeds its arrival in early spring in Canada; that at such times the birds take refuge in their nesting holes and lie huddled together in a semi-torpid state, sometimes for a week or ten days, until the return of genial weather, when they revive and appear as full of life and vigour as before. It is said that these and other swallows are possessed of habits and powers of which we have as yet but slight knowledge. Candour would compel me to add that the author of the monograph in question, who is one of the first living ornithologists, is inclined to believe that some swallows in some circumstances do hibernate.

At this I should experience a curious and almost startling sensation, as if the airy hands of my invisible companion had been clapped together, and the clap had been followed by an exclamation—a triumphant "Ah!"

Then there would be much to say concerning the changes in the bird population of Selborne parish, and of the southern counties generally. A few small species—hawfinch, pretty chaps, and gold-crest—were much more common now than in his day; but a very different and sadder story had to be told of most large birds. Not only had the honey buzzard never returned to nest on the beeches of the Hanger since 1780, but it had continued to decrease everywhere in England and was now extinct. The raven, too, was lost to England as an inland breeder. It could not now be said that "there are bustards on the wide downs near Brighthelmstone," nor indeed anywhere in the kingdom. The South Downs were unchanged, and there were still pretty rides and prospects round Lewes; but he might now make his autumn journey to Ringmer without seeing kites and buzzards, since these had both vanished; nor would he find the chough breeding at Beachy Head, and all along the Sussex coast. It would also be necessary to mention the disappearance of the quail, and the growing scarcity of other once abundant species, such as the stone plover and curlew, and even of the white owl, which no longer inhabited its ancient breeding-place beneath the caves of Selborne Church.