Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children

by W. Houghton

The word barnabee or burnabee, or, as Southey writes it, burnie-bee, no doubt has reference to the burnished or polished wing cases of the insect.

Let us now look out for the coots and water-hens, which love to dabble amongst the weeds of these pools, and to hide amongst the hedges and bulrushes that so thickly skirt them. See how rapidly the swifts or "Jack-squealers," as the country folks call them, are gliding by; you remember when we were noticing the swallows and martins that we thought of the swifts. Look at the beautiful scythe-like form of the wings; the tail, you see, is slightly forked; but the bird has the power of bringing the feathers together, so that sometimes you cannot see its cleft form. I generally notice swifts in the neighbourhood about the 5th of May; this year Mr. John Shaw tells me he saw some in Shrewsbury as early as the 23rd of April. Although they come to us the last of the swallow family, they leave us the soonest. By the middle of August most of the swifts will have left us.

This bird has remarkably short legs; and I remember more than once taking one off the ground when I was a boy at school, for unless it is raised a little above the level of the ground, it finds it very difficult to mount upwards by reason of its extremely short legs and long wings. If we had a swift in our hands, I could point out how it differed from the rest of the swallow family in the structure of its feet; in the other members the four toes are arranged three before and one behind; in the swift all the four toes are directed forwards. There is another kind of swift, the "white-bellied swift," which has, on a few occasions, been noticed in this country. It is rather larger than the common swift, and has wings of greater length, and can fly even more rapidly. Hark! I hear the noise of a coot proceeding from the reeds of a pond. I dare say if we keep quite still we shall get a glimpse of her. There she comes; and do look, a lot of young ones with her; little black downy things they are, as we should see were we near enough to examine them. The old birds have a naked white patch on the forehead, and are therefore called bald-coots. You can see the white patch now she faces us and the sun is shining; the body is a dingy black tinged with dark grey; you notice a little white about the wings. The feet of the coot are curiously formed, each of the four toes is partly webbed, having a membrane forming rounded lobes; the claws are very sharp, and the bird does not hesitate to make use of them if you catch hold of it carelessly; so Col. Hawker gives the following caution to young sportsmen—"Beware of a winged coot, or he will scratch you like a cat."

I never saw a coot dive; and think it seldom does; water-hens, every one knows, are frequent divers.

The old bird is pulling up some of the weeds of the pool for the young ones; how carefully she attends to them; the heads of the little ones are nearly naked, and of a bright orange colour mixed with blue; but this brilliant colouring lasts only a few days. The nest is made of broken reeds and flags, and hidden amongst the tall rushes and edges in the water.

Bewick mentions the case of a coot having built her nest among some rushes, which were afterwards loosened by the wind, and of course the nest was driven about and floated upon the surface of the water in every direction; notwithstanding which, the female continued to sit as usual, and brought out her young upon her movable habitation. See, now they have all gone away to hide amongst the reeds; they like to come out into the open water late in the evening, and it is not often easy to observe them in the day-time. There are plenty of moor-hens or water-hens in these reedy pools. They are not so peaceful as the coots, for they have been known to attack young ducklings. There one swims, jerking up its tail, which is whitish underneath, and nodding its head; the moor-hen is a smaller bird than the coot, though resembling it both in form and habits. The feet, however, are very different, for, instead of the toes being furnished with a lobed membrane, they have a continuous narrow one down each. Moor-hens have been known to remove their eggs from the nest, in order to add to it, and to replace them again. Mr. Selby relates the following interesting account:

"During the early part of the summer of 1835 a pair of water-hens built their nest by the margin of the ornamental pond at Bell's Hill, a piece of water of considerable extent, and ordinarily fed by a spring from the height above, but into which the contents of another large pond can occasionally be admitted. This was done while the female was sitting; and as the nest had been built when the water-level stood low, the sudden influx of this large body of water from the second pond caused a rise of several inches, so as to threaten the speedy immersion and consequent destruction of the eggs. This the birds seem to have been aware of, and immediately took precaution against so imminent a danger; for when the gardener, upon whose veracity I can safely rely, seeing the sudden rise of the water, went to look after the nest, expecting to find it covered and the eggs destroyed, or at least forsaken by the hen, he observed, while at a distance, both birds busily engaged about the brink where the nest was placed; and when near enough, he clearly perceived that they were adding, with all possible dispatch, fresh materials to raise the fabric beyond the level of the increased contents of the pond, and that the eggs had by some means been removed from the nest by the birds, and were then deposited upon the grass, about a foot or more from the margin of the water. He watched them for some time, and saw the nest rapidly increase in height; but I regret to add that he did not remain long enough, fearing he might create alarm, to witness the interesting act of the replacing of the eggs, which must have been effected shortly afterwards; for upon his return in less than an hour, he found the hen quietly sitting upon them in the newly raised nest. In a few days afterwards the young were hatched, and, as usual, soon quitted the nest and took to the water with the parent. The nest was shown to me in situ very soon afterwards, and I could then plainly discern the formation of the new with the old part of the fabric."

"What is that little bird in the water?" asked Jack. "Oh! he is suddenly gone; do you see the curl in the water where it dived?" It was no doubt a dabchick, then, from your description, though I was not in time to see it before it dived; if we keep quite still and silent I dare say it will appear again. There it is, dabbling in the water in search of water insects that are found amongst the weeds. Another name of this bird is the little grebe; several species of grebes have been found in this county; the great-crested grebe is a very handsome bird and frequents lakes and rivers; but of the five British grebes, the little dabchick is by far the most common. The feet of these birds are peculiar, the toes are not connected together by a web, as you see in ducks and geese; they are, however, united at the base, and each of the three front toes is surrounded by a broad continuous membrane; the lower part of the leg is also very flat; the legs are placed very far backwards, so that these birds stand almost upright; the wings are short and seldom used for flight; however, they are admirable swimmers and divers, and pretty, lively little birds. The plumage of this little grebe varies according to the time of year. Now, in the summer weather, the head, neck and back are a very dark brown; the cheeks and front of the neck a rich chestnut; chin jet black; in the winter they lose this chestnut colour, and are then of a light olive-grey colour and white underneath. Formerly the two different states of the plumage were thought to mark two different species.

The nest, as Mr. Gould tells us, is a raft of weeds and aquatic plants carefully heaped together in a rounded form. The young ones have delicate rose-coloured bills and harlequin-like markings on the body, and rosy-white breasts. "So active and truly aquatic is the dabchick, even when only one or two days old, that it is almost impossible to see it in a state of nature; for immediately after the young birds are hatched, they either take to the water of their own accord, or cling when not more than an hour old to the backs of their parents, who dive away with them out of harm's way." Mr. Gould mentions that a friend of his, when out on a fishing excursion with him, once shot a dabchick as it dived across a shallow stream; on emerging wounded, on the surface, two young ones clinging to the back were caught by Mr. Gould in his landing net.

So rapid is their diving that they can often avoid the charge of a gun; they then rise again "with only the tips of their bill above water, and even these generally concealed amongst some patch of weeds or grass." The grebes have a peculiar habit of plucking off the soft feathers from the under side of the body and swallowing them. Why they do so is not known.