A Year with the Birds / Third Edition, Enlarged

by W. Warde Fowler

There is yet one bird of our woods—or rather of one wood, thickly planted with oaks—of which I have as yet said nothing. I had long suspected his presence in that wood, but my search for him was always in vain. One day in May, 1888, I luckily turned down a little by-path which led me through a forest of young ashes, and brought me out into a wide clearing carpeted with blue-bells and overshadowed by tall oaks. Here I heard a sibilant noise, which in the distance I had taken for the Grasshopper Warbler; though I had had doubts of it, as it was not prolonged for more than two or three seconds. Now also I heard, from the thick wood beyond the clearing, a series of plaintive notes, something like those of the Tree Pipit, and this stopped me again as I was turning away. I listened, and heard these notes repeated several times, feeling more and more certain each time that I had heard them before in this very wood, and suspected them to be the call-notes of the Wood-warbler, a bird with which, strangely enough, I had never had any personal acquaintance.

The sibilant noise was all this time going on close at hand. The wood was comparatively silent owing to the east wind, and I could concentrate my attention on these new voices without distraction. I noticed that the sibilation was preceded by three or four slightly longer and more distinct notes, and as this answered to my book-knowledge of the Wood-warbler, I became more and more anxious to see the bird. But he would not let me see him. And then came the puzzling plaintive notes again, as different as possible from the sibilant ones, and it became absolutely necessary to discover whether they were uttered by the same creature.

At last I thought I had made sure of the bird in one particular little thicket not more than ten or twelve yards from me, and crept on as softly as possible out of the clearing into the underwood. Of course the dead twigs crackled under my feet and the branches had to be put forcibly aside, and the voice retreated as I neared it. I thought of a certain morning in the Alps, and of a provoking and futile hunt after Bonelli’s Warbler; but pushing on a little further into a small open space, I stopped once more, and then firmly resolved not to move again.

I had a long time to wait. Sometimes the plaintive voice, but oftener the sibilant notes, would be uttered quite close to me, and the singer would stay for some time in the same bush, hidden from my sight, but near at hand. And at last, as a fisherman sees the surface of the smooth black pool in an instant broken, and then feels his fish, I caught sight of a momentary motion in the leaves not ten yards away from me. A minute later I saw the bird, and knew at once that I had the Wood-warbler before me. There was nothing now to do but to stand motionless and see more of it.

By degrees it seemed to grow used to my presence, and showed itself to me without any sign of alarm. What can be more delightful than to watch in perfect solitude and security the bird you have been looking for so long? There was the yellow throat, the delicate white breast, the characteristic streak over the eye—all plainly visible as he sat facing me; and when he kindly turned his tail to me and preened his feathers, I could see the greenish-brown back, and note the unusual length of wing. Several times, when close to me, he gave utterance to that curious ‘shivering’ sibilation (to use Gilbert White’s apt word), his bill opening wide to give the last shake, his head lifted upwards, the long wings quivering slightly, and the whole body vibrating under the effort. One thing more was needed—a visible proof that the long-drawn plaintive notes were his notes too, and this I had the pleasure of securing by a little more patience. But when my little warbler uttered these notes, his bill was not opened wide, nor did his frame vibrate with any apparent effort; they seemed rather an inward soliloquy or a secret signal (as indeed they were), and always ended up with a short note and a sudden closing of the bill, as if to say, “All’s right, that’s well over.”

Then behind me I heard the undoubted double call-note of a warbler, which probably I myself caused the little bird’s wife to utter, trespassing as I surely was in the neighbourhood of the nest. It did just cross my mind that I ought to search for that nest, but I gave up the idea almost at once, and bade adieu in peace to my new friends. They had shown themselves to me without fear, and they should have no reason to dislike me.

Beyond the woods where these birds live, we come out on scrubby fields, often full of thistles, and spotted with furze-bushes. These fields are the special favourites of the Linnets and Goldfinches; the Linnets are in great abundance, the latter, since the Wild Birds’ Act came into operation, by no means uncommon in autumn.

We cannot but pause again and again as we make our way through the gorse and brushwood, for the little Linnet in his full summer dress is hardly less beautiful than the Goldfinch, and all his ways and actions are no less cheering and attractive. The male birds differ much, perhaps according to age, in brilliancy of plumage; but a fine cock Linnet in full dress of crimson breast and crown, white wing-bars and tail-feathers, and chestnut back, is to my thinking as splendid a little bird as these islands can show. I can never forget the astonishment of a companion who hardly knew the bird, when I pointed him out a Linnet in this splendid costume one July day on a Radnorshire hill.

The ground now rises towards the hills which form the limit of our western horizon. On these hills may now and then be seen a few birds which we seldom meet with in the lower grounds, such as the Stone-chat, the Brambling, the Wheatear; but as the hills are for the most part cultivated, and abound in woods and brooks, the difference between the bird life of the uplands and the lowlands is not remarkable at any time of the year.

It may be worth while, however, to note down in outline the chief movements of the birds in our district in the course of a single year. In January, which is usually the coldest month in the year, the greater number of our birds are collected in flocks in the open country, the villages only retaining the ordinary Blackbirds, Thrushes, Robins, &c. The winter migrants are in great numbers in the fields, but they and almost all other birds will come into villages and even into towns in very severe weather. In February, villages, orchards, and gardens are beginning to receive more of the bird population, while the great flocks are beginning to break up under the influence of the approach of spring. In March the same process goes on more rapidly; the fields are becoming deserted and the gardens fuller. But meanwhile hedges, woods, thickets and streams are filling with a population from beyond the seas, some part of which penetrates even into the gardens, sharing the fruit-trees with the residents, or modestly building their nests on the ground. As a rule, though one of a very general kind, it may be laid down that our resident birds prefer the neighbourhood of mankind for nesting purposes, while the summer migrants build chiefly in the thickets and hedges of the open country; so that just at the time when Chaffinches, Greenfinches, Goldfinches, and a host of other birds are leaving the open country for the precincts of the village, their places are being taken by the new arrivals of the spring. Or if this rule be too imperfect to be worth calling a rule at all (for all the Swallow kind but one British species build in human habitations), it is at least true that if a garden offers ample security for nesting, the proportion of residents to migrants taking advantage of it will be much greater than in a wood or on a heath.