On days when the sun shone they came in numbers to perch on the telegraph wires stretched across a field between the cottage and village. It was beautiful to see them, a double line fifty or sixty yards long of the small, pale-coloured, graceful birdlings, sitting so close together as to be almost touching, all with their beaks pointing to the west, from where the wind blew.
In this same field, one day when this pleasant company were leaving us after a week's rest, I picked up one that had killed himself by striking against the wire. A most delicate little dead swallow, looking in his pale colouring and softness as moth-like in death as he had seemed when alive and flying. I took him home—the little moth-bird pilgrim to Africa, who had got no farther than the Itchen on his journey—and buried him at the roots of a honeysuckle growing by the cottage door. It seemed fittest that he should be put there, to become part with the plant which, in the pallid yellows and dusky reds of its blossoms, and in the perfume it gives out so abundantly at eventide, has an expression of melancholy, and is more to us in some of our moods than any other flower.
An orphaned blackbird
The bad weather brought to our little plot of ground a young blackbird, who had evidently been thrown upon the world too early in life. A good number of blackbird broods had been brought off in the bushes about us, and in the rough and tumble of those tempestuous days some of the young had no doubt got scattered and lost; this at all events was one that had called and called to be fed and warmed and comforted in vain—we had heard him calling for days—and who had now grown prematurely silent, and had soberly set himself to find his own living as best he could. Between the lawn and the small sweetbriar hedge there was a strip of loose mould where roses had been planted, and here the bird had discovered that by turning over the dead leaves and loose earth a few small morsels were to be found. During those cold, windy, wet days we observed him there diligently searching in his poor, slow little way. He would strike his beak into the loose ground, making a little hop forward at the same time to give force to the stroke, and throw up about as much earth as would cover a shilling-piece; then he would gaze attentively at the spot, and after a couple of seconds hop and strike again; and finally, if he could see nothing to eat, he would move on a few inches and begin again in another place. That was all his art—his one poor little way of getting a living; and it was plain to see from his bedraggled appearance and feeble motions, that he was going the way of most young orphaned birds.
Now, I hate playing at providence among the creatures, but we cannot be rid of pity; and there are exceptional cases in which one feels justified in putting out a helping hand. Nature herself is not always careless of the individual life: or perhaps it would be better to say with Thoreau, "We are not wholly involved in Nature." And anxious to give the poor bird a chance by putting him in a sheltered place, and feeding him up, as Ruskin once did in a like case, I set about catching him, but could not lay hands on him, for he was still able to fly a little, and always managed to escape pursuit among the brambles, or else in the sedges by the waterside. Half an hour after being hunted, he would be back on the edge of the lawn prodding the ground in the old feeble, futile way. And the scraps of food I cunningly placed for him he disregarded, not knowing in his ignorance what was good for him. Then I got a supply of small earthworms, and, stalking him, tossed them so as to cause them to fall near him, and he saw and knew what they were, and swallowed them hungrily; and he saw, too, that they were thrown to him by a hand, and that the hand was part of that same huge grey-clad monster that had a little while back so furiously hunted him; and at once he seemed to understand the meaning of it all, and instead of flying from he ran to meet us, and, recovering his voice, called to be fed. The experience of one day made him a tame bird; on the second day he knew that bread and milk, stewed plums, pie-crust, and, in fact, anything we had to give, was good for him; and in the course of the next two or three days he acquired a useful knowledge of our habits. Thus, at half-past three in the morning he would begin calling to be fed at the bedroom window. If no notice was taken of him he would go away to try and find something for himself, and return at five o'clock when breakfast was in preparation, and place himself before the kitchen door. Usually he got a small snack then; and at the breakfast hour (six o'clock) he would turn up at the dining-room window and get a substantial meal. Dinner and tea time—twelve and half-past three o'clock—found him at the same spot; but he was often hungry between meals, and he would then sit before one door or window and call, then move to the next door, and so on until he had been all round the cottage. It was most amusing to see him when, on our return from a long walk or a day out, he would come to meet us, screaming excitedly, bounding over the lawn with long hops, looking like a miniature very dark-coloured kangaroo.
One day I came back alone to the cottage, and sat down on the lawn in a canvas chair, to wait for my companion who had the key. The blackbird had seen, and came flying to me, and pitching close to my feet began crying to be fed, shaking his wings, and dancing about in a most excited state, for he had been left a good many hours without food, and was very hungry. As I moved not in my chair he presently ran round and began screaming and fluttering on the other side of it, thinking, I suppose, that he had gone to the wrong place, and that by addressing himself to the back of my head he would quickly get an answer.
The action of this bird in coming to be fed naturally attracted a good deal of attention among the feathered people about us; they would look on at a distance, evidently astonished and much puzzled at our bird's boldness in coming to our feet. But nothing dreadful happened to him, and little by little they began to lose their suspicion; and first a robin—the robin is always first—then other blackbirds to the number of seven, then chaffinches and dunnocks, all began to grow tame and to attend regularly at meal-time to have a share in anything that was going. The most lively, active, and quarrelsome member of this company was our now glossy foundling; and it troubled us to think that in feeding him we were but staving off the evil day when he would once more have to fend for himself. Certainly we were teaching him nothing. But our fears were idle. The seven wild blackbirds that had formed a habit of coming to share his food were all young birds, and as time went on and the hedge fruit began to ripen, we noticed that they kept more and more together. Whenever one was observed to fly straight away to some distance, in a few moments another would follow, then another; and presently it would be seen that they were all making their way to some spot in the valley, or to the woods on the other side. After several hours' absence they would all reappear on the lawn, or near it, at the same time, showing that they had been together throughout the day and had returned in company. After observing them in their comings and goings for several weeks I felt convinced that this species has in it the remains of a gregarious instinct which affects the young birds. Our bird, as a member of this little company, must have quickly picked up from the others all that it was necessary for him to know, and at last it was plain to us from his behaviour at the cottage that he was doing very well for himself. He was often absent most of the day with the others, and on his return late in the afternoon he would pick over the good things placed for him in a leisurely way, selecting a morsel here and there, and eating more out of compliment to us, as it seemed, than because he was hungry. But up to the very last, when he had grown as hardy and strong on the wing as any of his wild companions, he kept up his acquaintance with and confidence in us; and even at night when I would go out to where most of our wild birds roosted, in the trees and bushes growing in a vast old chalk-pit close to the cottage, and called "Blackie," instantly there would be a response—a softly chuckled note, like a sleepy "Good-night," thrown back to me out of the darkness.
Cirl bunting
During the spell of rough weather which brought us the blackbird, my interest was centred in the cirl buntings. On 4th August, I was surprised to find that they were breeding again in the little sweetbriar hedge, and had three fledglings about a week old in the nest. They had on this occasion gone from the west to the east side of the cottage, and the new nest, two to three feet from the ground, was placed in the centre of a small tangle of sweet-briar, bramble, and bryony, within a few yards of the trunk of the big lime tree under which I was accustomed to sit. I had this nest under observation until 9th August, which happened to be the worst day, the coldest, wettest, and windiest of all that wintry spell; and yet in such weather the young birds came out of their cradle. For a couple of days they remained near the nest concealed among some low bushes; then the whole family moved away to a hedge at some distance on higher ground, and there I watched the old birds for some days feeding their young on grasshoppers.