Hampshire Days

by W. H. Hudson

The result of my observations on these birds and on three other pairs which I found breeding close by—one in the village, another just outside of it, and the third by the thorn-grown foundation of ruined Abbotstone not far off—came as a surprise to me; for it appeared that the cirl in its breeding habits and language was not like other buntings, nor indeed like any other bird. The young hatched out of the curiously marked or "written" eggs are like those of the yellowhammer, black as moor-hen chicks in their black down, opening wide crimson mouths to be fed. But should the parent birds, or one of them, be watching you at the nest, they will open not their beaks, but hearing and obeying the warning note they lie close as if glued to the bottom of the nest. It is a curious sound. Unless one knows it, and the cause of it, one may listen a long time and not discover the bird that utters it. The buntings sit as usual, motionless and unseen among the leaves of the tree, and, so long as you are near the nest, keep up the sound, an excessively sharp metallic chirp, uttered in turns by both birds, but always a short note in the female, and a double note in the male, the second one prolonged to a wail or squeal. No other bird has an alarm or warning note like it: it is one of those very high sounds that are easily missed by the hearing, like the robin's fine-drawn wail when in trouble about his young; but when you catch and listen to it the effect on the brain is somewhat distressing. A Hampshire friend and naturalist told me that a pair of these birds that bred in his garden almost drove him crazy with their incessant sharp alarm note.

The effect of this warning sound on the young is very striking: before they can fly or are fit to leave the nest, they are ready, when approached too closely, to leap like startled frogs out of the nest, and scuttle away into hiding on the ground. Once they have flown they are extremely difficult to find, as, on hearing the parent's warning note, they squat down on their perch and remain motionless as a leaf among the leaves. Often I could only succeed in making them fly by seizing and shaking the branches of a thorn or other bush in which I knew they were hidden. So long as the young bird keeps still on its branch, the old bird on some tree twenty or thirty or forty yards away remains motionless, though all the time emitting the sharp, puzzling, warning sound; but the very instant that the young bird quits his perch, darting suddenly away, the parent bird is up too, shooting out so swiftly as almost to elude the sight, and in a moment overtakes and flies with the young bird, hugging it so closely that the two look almost like one. Together they dart away to a distance, usually out over a field, and drop and vanish in the grass. But in a few moments the parent bird is back again, sitting still among the leaves, emitting the shrill sound, ready to dart away with the next young bird that seeks to escape by flight.

This method of attending and safe-guarding the young is, indeed, common among birds, but in no species known to me is it seen in such vigour and perfection. What most strikes one is the change from immobility when the bird sits invisible among the leaves, marking the time with those excessively sharp, metallic clicks and wails like a machine-bird, to unexpected, sudden, brilliant activity.

When not warned into silence and immobility by the parent the young cirls are clamorous enough, crying to be fed, and these, too, have voices of an excessive sharpness. Of other native species the sharpest hunger-cries that I know are those of the tits, especially the long-tailed tit, and the spotted fly-catcher; but these sounds are not comparable in brain-piercing acuteness to those of the young cirls.

Another thing I have wondered at in a creature of so quiet a disposition as the cirl bunting is the extraordinary violence of the male towards other small birds when by chance they come near his young, in or out of the nest. So jealous is he that he will attack a willow-wren or a dunnock with as much fury as other birds use only towards the most deadly enemies of their young.

Here, by the Itchen, where we have all four buntings, I find that the reed-bunting—called black-head or black-top—is, after the cirl, the latest singer. He continues when, towards the end of August, the corn-bunting and yellowhammer become silent. He is the poorest singer of the bunting tribe, the first part of his song being like the chirp of an excited sparrow, somewhat shriller, and then follows the long note, shrill too, or sibilant and tremulous. It is more like the distressful hunger-call of some young birds than a song-note. A reedy sound in a reedy place, and one likes to hear it in the green valley among the wind-rustled, sword-shaped leaves and waving spears of rush and aquatic grass. So fond is he of his own music that he will sing even when moulting. I was amused one day when listening to a reed-bunting sitting on a top branch of a dwarf alder tree in the valley of Ovington, busily occupied in preening his fluffed-out and rather ragged-looking plumage, yet pausing at short intervals in his task to emit his song. So taken up was he with the feather-cleaning and singing, that he took no notice of me when I walked to within twenty-five yards of him. By-and-by, in passing one of his long flight-feathers through his beak it came out, at which he appeared very much surprised. First he raised his head, then began turning it about this way and that, as if admiring the feather he held, or trying to get a better sight of it. For quite a minute he kept it, forgetting to sing, then in turning it about he accidentally dropped it. Bending his head down, he watched its slow fall to the grass below very intently, and continued gazing down even after it was on the ground; then, pulling himself together, he resumed the feather-preening task, with its musical interludes.

The worst day during the bad weather when the young cirl buntings left the nest brought the wintry spell to an end. A few days of such perfect weather followed that one could wish for no higher good than to be alive on that green earth, beneath that blue sky. One could best appreciate the crystal purity and divine blueness of the immense space by watching the rooks revelling on high in the morning sunshine, looking in their blackness against the crystalline blue like bird-figures with outspread, motionless wings, carved out of anthracite coal, and suspended by invisible wires in heaven. You could watch them, a numerous company, moving upward in wide circles, the sound of their voices coming fainter and fainter back to earth, until at that vast height they seemed no bigger than humble-bees.

The oak in August

This clarity of atmosphere had a striking effect, too, on the appearance of the trees, and I could not help noticing the superiority of the oak to all other forest trees in this connection. There comes a time in late summer when at last it loses that "glad light grene" which has distinguished it among its dark-leafed neighbours, and made it in our eyes a type of unfading spring and of everlastingness. It grows dark, too, at last, and is as dark as a cypress or a cedar of Lebanon; but observe how different this depth of colour is from that of the elm. The elm, too, stands alone, or in rows, or in isolated groups in the fields, and in the clear sunshine its foliage has a dull, summer-worn, almost rusty green. There is no such worn and weary look in the foliage of the oak in August and September. It is of a rich, healthy green, deep but undimmed by time and weather, and the leaf has a gloss to it. Again, on account of its manner of growth, with widespread branches and boughs and twigs well apart, the foliage does not come before us as a mere dense mass of green—an intercepting cloud, as in a painted tree; but the sky is seen through it, and against the sky are seen the thousand thousand individual leaves, clear-cut and beautiful in shape.