A Year with the Birds / Third Edition, Enlarged

by W. Warde Fowler

Our village is so placed, that all the birds that nest in our gardens and orchards have easy and immediate access to a variety of feeding-grounds. From my window, as I write, I look over the village allotments, where all kinds of birds can be supplied with what they need, whether they be grain-eating or grub-eating; here come the Rooks, from the rookery close by, and quite unconscious of my presence behind the window, and regardless of the carcases of former comrades which swing on some of the allotments, they turn out the grubs with those featherless white bills which are still as great a mystery as the serrated claw of the Nightjar.

Here also come the Wood-pigeons, and in late summer the Turtle-doves—far worse enemies to the cottager than the rooks; here all the common herd of Blackbirds, Thrushes, Sparrows, Chaffinches, and Greenfinches, help to clear the growing vegetables of crawling pests at the rate of hundreds and thousands a day, yet the owners of the allotments have been accustomed since their childhood to destroy every winged thing that comes within their cruel reach. Short-sighted, unobservant as they are, they decline to be instructed on matters of which they know very little, but stick to what they know like limpets. For my part, I decline to protect my gooseberries and currants from the birds; their ravages are grossly exaggerated, and what they get I do not grudge them, considering their services during the rest of the year.[34]

Beyond the allotments the ground falls to the brook which I mentioned as descending from Chipping Norton to join the Evenlode. This brook is dammed up just below to supply an old flour-mill, and has been so used for centuries; its bed is therefore well lined with mud, and when the water is let out, which often happens (for the mill is on its last legs, and supports itself by aid of a beer-license which is the plague of the village), this mud appears in little banks under the shelving rat-riddled lip of the meadow. Here is a chance for some of the more unusual birds, as every ornithologist would say if he saw the stream; but both water and mud are often thick with the dye from the Chipping Norton tweed-mill, and no trout will live below the point at which the poisoned water comes in. Strange to say, the poisoning does not seem to affect the birds. Two pairs of Gray Wagtails, which I seldom see in the Evenlode, passed a happy time here from July to December last year, preferring some turn of the brook where the water broke over a few stones or a miniature weir; and through August and September they were joined by several Green Sandpipers. These beautiful birds, whose departure I always regret, are on their way from their breeding-places in the North to some winter residence; they stay only a few weeks in England, and little is known about them. Many a time have I stalked them, looking far along the stream with a powerful glass in hopes of catching them at work with their long bills; each effort comes to the same provoking conclusion, the bird suddenly shooting up from beneath your feet, just at a place which you fancied you had most carefully scanned. When they first arrive they will fly only to a short distance, and the bright white of their upper tail-feathers enables you to mark them down easily for a second attempt; but after a few days they will rise high in the air, like a snipe, when disturbed, and uttering their shrill pipe, circle round and round, and finally vanish.

It should be noted that this species is called the Green Sandpiper because its legs are green; such are the wilful ways of English terminology.[35] It is the only Sandpiper we have, beside the common species, which invariably prefers the Evenlode, where it may every now and then be seen working its rapid way along the edge of the water, quite unconcerned at a spectator, and declining to go off like a champagne cork. Both kinds come in spring and late summer, but the Green Sandpiper is much more regular in his visits, and stays with us, in autumn at least, much longer. A stray pair found their way here last winter in a hard frost, and rose from beneath my feet as I walked along the Evenlode on December 24th. This is the only time I have ever seen them here except in the other brook; and I have very little doubt that they were total strangers to the locality. Had they ever been here before, I make bold to say that they would have gone to their old haunts.

Beyond the brook lies a magnificent meadow nearly a mile long, called the Yantle, in which, a century and a half ago, the little Warren Hastings used to lie and look up with ambitious hopes and fears at the hills and woods of Daylesford. This meadow was once doubtless the common pasture ground of the parish: it now serves as ager publicus for great numbers of winged families bred in our gardens and orchards. Goldfinches, linnets, starlings, redstarts, pipits, wagtails, white-throats, and a dozen or two of other kinds, spend their whole day here when the broods are reared. The Yellow Wagtails are always conspicuous objects; not that they are brilliantly coloured, for the young ones are mostly brown on the back, and would hardly catch an inexperienced eye, but because of the playfulness of their ways and their graceful, wavy flight. Young birds play just like kittens, or like the fox-cubs I once caught playing in Daylesford wood at the mouth of their earth, and watched for a long time as they rolled and tumbled over each other. Only yesterday (July 15, 1885) I watched a host of young willow-wrens, whitethroats, titmice, and others, sporting with each other in a willow-coppice, and mixing together without much reserve. Once I was taken aback by the sight of two young buntings at play; for a time they quite deceived me by their agility, fluttering in the air like linnets, unconscious that a single winter was to turn them into burly and melancholy buntings. The student of birds who sighs when the breeding season is over and the familiar voices are mute, is consoled by the sight of all these bright young families, happy in youth, liberty, and abundance. His knowledge, too, is immensely increased by the study of their habits and appearance. His sense of the ludicrous is also sometimes touched, as mine was yesterday when I went to see how my young swallows were getting on under the roof of an outhouse, and found them all sitting in a row on a rafter, like school-children; or when the young goldfinches in the chestnut tree grew too big for their nest, but would persist in sitting in it till they sat it all out of shape, and no one could make out how they contrived to hold on by it any longer. Young birds too, like young trout, are much less suspicious than old ones, and will often let you come quite close to them. In Magdalen Walk at Oxford the young birds delight to hop about on the gravel path, supplying themselves, I suppose, with the pebbles which they need for digestion; and here one day in July a young Robin repeatedly let me come within two yards of him, at which distance from me he picked up a fat green caterpillar, swallowed it with great gusto, and literally smacked his bill afterwards. The very close examination thus afforded me of this living young Robin disclosed a strong rufous tint on the tail-coverts, of which I can find nothing in descriptions of the bird; if this is usually the case, it should indicate a close connection with the Redstarts, the young of which resemble the young Robin also in the mottled brown of the rest of their plumage.

Our meadows are liable to flood occasionally in the winter, and also in a summer wetter than usual. One stormy day in July, some years ago, I espied two common Gulls standing in the water of a slight flood, apparently quite at home. But our Rooks found them out, and considering the Yantle sacred to themselves and such small birds as they might be graciously pleased to allow there, proceeded to worry them by flying round and round above them incessantly until the poor birds were fain to depart. Rooks are very hostile to intruders, and quite capable of continued teasing; I have watched them for a whole morning persecuting a Kestrel. No sooner did the Kestrel alight on the ground than the Rooks ‘went for it,’ and drove it away; and wherever it went they pursued it, backwards and forwards, over a space of two or three miles.

But our Rooks found them out, and ... proceeded to worry them.—[p. 141].

In winter the floods will sometimes freeze. One very cold day, as I was about to cross the ice-bound meadow, I saw some little things in motion at the further end, like feathers dancing about on the ice, which my glass discovered to be the tails of a family of Long-tailed Tits. They were pecking away at the ice, with their tails high in the air. As I neared them they flew away, and marking the place where they were at work, I knelt down on the ice and examined it with the greatest care. Not a trace of anything eatable was to be found. Were they trying to substitute ice for water? Not a drop of water was to be found anywhere near. I have seen Fieldfares and Redwings doing the same thing in Christ Church meadow at Oxford, but the unfrozen Cherwell was within a few yards of them.[36] Whether or no the Long-tails were trying to appease their thirst, I may suggest to those who feed the starving birds in winter, that they should remember that water as well as food is necessary to support life.

The Yantle is a great favourite with Plovers, Turtle-doves, and Wood-pigeons, and in the winter it is much patronized by Fieldfares and Redwings. And a day or two ago I surprised four Curlew here (March 21), on their way from the sea to their inland breeding-places. But enough of the village and its gardens and out-lying meadows; in the next chapter we will stroll further afield.