A Year with the Birds / Third Edition, Enlarged

by W. Warde Fowler

CHAPTER V.
A MIDLAND VILLAGE: RAILWAY AND WOODLAND.

Beyond the Yantle we come upon a line of railway, running down from Chipping Norton to join the main line to Worcester. Just as the waters of the Evenlode are reinforced at this point in its course by the two contingent streams I described in the last chapter, so the main railway is here joined by two subsidiary lines, the one coming from Chipping Norton and the other from Cheltenham over the Cotswolds. Paradoxical as it may seem, I do not hesitate to say that this large mileage of railway within a small radius acts beneficially upon our bird-life. Let us see how this is.

In the first place, both cuttings and embankments, as soon as they are well overgrown with grass, afford secure and sunny nesting-places to a number of birds which build their nests on the ground. The Whin-chat for example, an abundant bird here every summer, gives the railway-banks its especial patronage. The predatory village-boys cannot prowl about these banks with impunity except on Sundays, and even then are very apt to miss a Whin-chat’s nest. You may see the cock-bird sitting on the telegraph wires, singing his peaceful little song, but unless you disturb his wife from her beautiful blue eggs you are very unlikely to find them in the thickening grass of May or June. And even if she is on the nest, she will sit very close; I have seen an express train fly past without disturbing her, when the nest was but six or eight feet from the rails. The young, when reared, will often haunt the railway for the rest of the summer, undismayed by the rattle and vibration which must have shaken them even when they were still within the egg. Occasionally a Wheatear will make its appearance about the railway, but I have no evidence of its breeding there; nor is the Stone-chat often to be seen here, though it is a summer visitor not far off among the hills.

Let me say incidentally that no one who has either good eyes or a good glass ought ever to confound the two Chats together. In the breeding season the fine black head of the cock Stone-chat distinguishes him at once; but even the female should never be the subject of a blunder, if the observer has been at all used to attend to the attitudes of birds. The Stone-chat sits upright and almost defiant, and is a shorter and stouter bird than the Whin-chat, which perches in an attitude of greater humility, and always seems to me to deprecate your interference rather than to defy it. And it is quite in keeping with this that the ‘chat’ of the latter is not so loud and resonant as that of the former, as I have satisfied myself after careful observation of both; the Stone-chat penetrating to my dull ears at a greater distance than his cousin.[37] This really means that the bill of the one, and in fact his whole muscular system, is stronger than the same in the other, and the τὸ θυμοεῖδες of his constitution is more largely developed.

If I walk alongside of the railway, as it passes between the water-meadows and the corn-fields which lie above them, divided on each side from these by a low-lying withy-bed, I always keep an eye upon the telegraph-wires ahead, knowing by long experience that they will tell me what birds are breeding or have bred about here. As autumn approaches, great numbers indeed of visitors, Swallows, Martins, Linnets, and others, will come and sun themselves here, and even tempt a Sparrow-hawk or Kestrel to beat up and down the line; but in early summer, beside the Whin-chats, and the Whitethroats nesting in great numbers in the thick quickset hedges which border the line, it is chiefly the melancholy tribe of Buntings that will attract my notice.

I trust my friends the Buntings will not take offence at being called melancholy; I cannot retract the word, except in what is now called “a parliamentary sense.” I have just been looking through a series of plates and descriptions of all the Buntings of Europe, and in almost every one of them I see the same deflected tail and listless attitude,[38] and read of the same monotonous and continually repeated note. The Buntings form in fact, though apt to be confused with one another owing to their very strong family likeness, perhaps the most clearly-marked and idiosyncratic genus among the whole range of our smaller birds. This may be very easily illustrated from our three common English species. Look at the common Corn Bunting, as he sits on the wires or the hedge-top; he is lumpy, loose-feathered, spiritless, and flies off with his legs hanging down, and without a trace of agility or vivacity; he is a dull bird, and seems to know it. Even his voice is half-hearted; it reminds me often of an old man in our village who used to tell us that he had “a wheezing in his pipes.” Near him sits a Yellow Bunting (Yellowhammer), a beautiful bird when in full adult plumage of yellow head, orange-brown back, white outer tail-feathers, and pink legs; yet even this valued old friend is apt to be untidy in the sit of his feathers, to perch in a melancholy brown study with deflected tail, and to utter the same old song all the spring and summer through. This song, however (if indeed it can be called one), is a much better one than that of the Corn Bunting, and is occasionally even a little varied.[39]

Just below, on an alder branch or withy-sapling, sits a fine cock Reed Bunting, whose jet-black head and white neck make him a conspicuous object in spite of the sparrow-like brown of his back and wings. Except in plumage, he is exactly like his relations. He will sit there, as long as you like to stay, and shuffling his feathers, give out his odd tentative and half-hearted song. Like the others he builds on or close to the ground, in this case but a few yards from the rails, and his wife, like theirs, lays eggs streaked and lined in that curious way that is peculiar to Buntings alone. I have not had personal experience of our rarer Buntings, the Ortolan, the Snow Bunting, or even the Cirl Bunting, as living birds; but all the members of this curious race seem to have the characteristics mentioned above in a greater or less degree, and also a certain hard knob in the upper mandible of the bill, which is said to be used as a grindstone for the grain and seeds which are the food of them all in the adult state.

Keeping yet awhile to the railway, let us notice that even the station itself meets with some patronage from the birds. In the stacks of coal which are built up close to the siding, the Pied Wagtails occasionally make their nests, fitting them into some hospitable hole or crevice. These, like all other nests found in or about the station, are carefully protected by the employés of the company. In a deep hole in the masonry of the bridge which crosses the line a few yards below the station, a pair of Great Titmice built their nest two years ago, and successfully brought up their young, regardless of the puffing and rattling of the trains, for the hole was in the inside of the bridge, and only some six feet from the rails of the down line. A little coppice, remnant of a larger wood cut down to make room for the railway, still harbours immense numbers of birds; here for example I always hear the ringing note of the Lesser Whitethroat; and here, until a few years ago, a Nightingale rejoiced in the density of the overgrown underwood.

A Ring-ousel, the only specimen, alive or dead, which I have seen or heard of in these parts, was found dead here one morning some years ago, having come into collision with the telegraph wires in the course of its nocturnal migration. It was preserved and stuffed by the station-master, who showed it to me as a piebald Blackbird.