Birds in London

by W. H. Hudson

Of the many stories of their pet daws which they have told me, I will give one of a bird which was a particular favourite of Mrs. Melford’s. His invariable habit was, on returning from an expedition abroad, to fly straight into the house in search of her, and, sitting on her head, to express his affection and delight at rejoining her by passing his beak through her hair.

THE LADY AND THE DAW

Unfortunately, this bird had a weakness for eggs, which led him into many scrapes, and in the end very nearly proved his undoing. He was constantly hanging about and prying into the fowl-house, and whenever he felt sure that he was not observed he would slip in to purloin an egg. His cunning reacted on the fowls and made them cunning too. When he appeared they looked the other way, or walked off pretending not to see him; but no sooner would he be inside exploring the obscure corners for an egg than the battle-cry would sound, and then poor Jackie would find it hard indeed to escape from their fury with nothing worse than a sound drubbing. In a day or two, before his many sores and bruises had had time to heal, the cackling of a hen and the thought of a new-laid egg would tempt him again, and at length one day he could not escape; the loud cries of rage and of vengeance gratified attracted some person to the fowl-house, where Jackie was found lying on the ground in the midst of a crowd of fowls engaged in pounding and pecking his life out, scattering his hated black feathers in all directions. He was rescued more dead than alive, and subsequently tended by his mistress with loving care. He lived, but failed to recover his old gay spirits; day after day he moped in silence, a picture of abject misery, recalling in his half-naked, bruised, and bedraggled appearance the famous bird of Rheims, the stealer of the turquoise ring, after the awful malediction of the Lord Cardinal Archbishop had taken effect:

On crumpled claw,
Came limping a poor little lame jackdaw,
No longer gay
As on yesterday;
His feathers all seemed to be turned the wrong way;
His pinions drooped, he could hardly stand,
His head was as bald as the palm of your hand;
His eye so dim,
So wasted each limb,
That, heedless of grammar, they all cried ‘That’s him!’

By-and-by, when still in this broken-hearted and broken-feathered state, a sight to make his mistress weep, he disappeared; it was conjectured that some compassionate-minded neighbour, finding him in his garden or grounds, and seeing his pitiable condition, had put an end to his misery.

One day, a year later, Mrs. Melford, who was just recovering from an illness, was lying on a sofa in a room on the ground floor, when her husband, who was in the garden at the back, excitedly cried out that a wild jackdaw had just flown down and alighted near him. ‘A perfect beauty!’ he exclaimed; never had he seen a jackdaw in finer plumage! The lady, equally excited, called back, begging him to use every device to get the bird to stay. No sooner was her voice heard than the jackdaw rose up and dashed into the house, and flying the length of three rooms came to where she was lying, and at once alighted on her head and began passing his beak through her hair in the old manner. In no other way could this wild-looking and beautified bird have established his identity. His return was a great joy; they caressed and feasted him, and for several hours, during which he showed no desire to renew his intercourse with the fowls, he was as lively and amusing as he had ever been in the old days before he had got into trouble. But before night he left them, and has never returned since; doubtless he had established relations with some of the wild daws on the outskirts of London.

Before ending this chapter I should like to say a word about white jackdaws. It is a mystery to me where all the albinos occasionally to be seen in the London bird markets come from. I have seen half a dozen in the hands of one large dealer, two at another dealer’s, and several single birds at other shops; altogether about sixteen or eighteen white daws on sale at one time.

One often hears of and occasionally sees a white blackbird or other species in a wild state, but these uncoloured specimens are rare; they are also dear to the collector (nobody knows why), and as a rule are not long permitted to enjoy existence. Besides, in nine cases out of ten the abnormally white birds are not albinos. They are probably mere ‘sports,’ like our domestic white pigeons, fowls, and ducks, and would doubtless be more common but for the fact that their whiteness is a disadvantage to them in their struggle for life. It is rather curious to find that among wild birds those that have a black plumage appear more subject to loss of colour than others. Thus we find that, of our small birds, whiteness is more common in the blackbird than in any other species. Within the last twelve to eighteen months I have known of the existence of seven or eight white or partly white blackbirds in London; but during the same period I have not seen nor heard of a white thrush, and have only seen one white sparrow. My belief is that the species most commonly found with white or partly white plumage are the blackbird, rook, and daw. When carrion crows and ravens were abundant in this country it was probably no very unusual thing to meet with white specimens. The old ornithologist, Willughby, writing over two centuries ago, mentions two milk-white ravens which he saw; but the fact of their whiteness is less interesting to read at this distant date than the old author’s delightful speculations as to the cause of the phenomenon. He doubts that white ravens were as common in this country as Aldrovandus had affirmed that they were, and then adds: ‘I rather think that they are found in those mountainous Northern Countries, which are for the greatest part of the year covered with snow: Where also many other Animals change their native colours, and become white, as Bears, Foxes, Blackbirds, &c., whether it proceeds from the force of imagination, heightened by the constant intuition of Snow, or from the cold of the Climate, occasioning such a languishing of colour; as we see in old Age, when the natural heat decays, the hair grows grey, and at last white.’