A Year with the Birds / Third Edition, Enlarged

by W. Warde Fowler

Just as the population of the open country begins to decrease in numbers in early spring, so it increases rapidly in the first weeks of summer. The young broods that have spent their infancy in or near the village now seek more extended space and richer supplies of food, and when the hay is cut, they may be found swarming in all adjacent hedges and on the prostrate swathes, while the gardens are comparatively empty. But before July is over an attentive watcher will find that his garden is visited by birds which were not born and bred there; while the residents are away in the fields, the migrants begin to be attracted to the gardens by the ripening fruits of all kinds. White-throats, Willow-warblers, Chiff-chaffs, haunt the kitchen-garden for a while, then leave it on their departure for the coast and their journey southwards. After this last little migration, the villages and gardens remain almost deserted except by the Blackbirds and Thrushes, the Robins and the Wrens, until the winter drives the wilder birds to seek the neighbourhood of man once more. Even then, unless the garden be well timbered, they will be limited to a very few species, except in the hardest weather; and it is remarkable how little variety will be found among our winter pensioners—those recipients of out-door relief, who spoil their digestions by becoming greedy over a food which is not natural to them.

Out-door relief.

This rough attempt to sketch the local migrations of birds must be understood as applying to my own village only, and to gardens which are not surrounded with extensive parks.

CHAPTER VI.
THE ALPS IN SEPTEMBER.

As I observed in a former chapter, the movements of the birds of the Alps are, or ought to be, of very great interest to the ornithologist, owing partly to the wonderful variety of food and climate afforded by the gigantic structure of this mountain district, and partly to its geographical position, lying as it does in the very centre of the various routes of migration in spring and autumn.

I had long been anxious to obtain some more reliable information about these movements than I had acquired when my third chapter was written, and to obtain it as far as possible at first hand; and I eagerly seized the opportunity, in September of the present year (1886), of a visit to relations in Germany, to make a rapid détour to the Alps, about the time when the more delicate birds would be beginning to leave the higher valleys and pastures, now fast becoming too cold at night to suit their tender frames. I was able to remain only a very few days, but I saw and heard enough to occupy my attention fully during that short time, and am disposed to hope that by setting down my experiences I may attract the attention of autumn travellers to a matter which lends new interest to a hackneyed region, after the flowers have disappeared, and when the days are getting too short for ambitious mountain-climbing.

I arrived at Lucerne on the morning of September 16, and went on at once to Alpnacht, at the extreme end of the south-western arm of the lake, having on my left the starting-point of our former walk. I did not expect to see anything of autumn migration quite so early as this, or I should have taken the St. Gotthard line direct to the great tunnel, and then have established myself at once at or near the head of the Reuss valley which the railway follows; but I wished to see what birds were still to be found in the lower levels, and determined to spend a day or two in the great valley of Hasli, where I left my reader at the end of my third chapter. Before I take him further on this second round of exploration, I must ask him to look with me at a map of Switzerland, in order that we may understand the geographical conditions of the problem about which I was now going to try and learn a little.

A little study of a good map will show that the true alpine region of Switzerland proper consists of two enormous mountain barriers, fencing in, to north and south, a deep trench, nearly a hundred miles in length. This trench represents the valleys of the Rhine and Rhone, which start within a short distance of each other, and are only interrupted for a few miles, in the very centre of the region, by the upper part of the valley of the river Reuss, which here forms a kind of elevated plain, enclosed, like the trench itself, between vast mountains; this plain is the bed of an ancient lake, which once escaped from its prison through a narrow opening at the eastern end, where the Devils’ Bridge now stands. On the northern side of the trench, throughout its whole length, the mountain barrier is pierced by ordinary summer routes at three points only: beginning from the west, at the Gemmi Pass, north of the Rhone, where the opening is artificial rather than natural; at the Grimsel Pass, which debouches upon the source of the Rhone in its Glacier; and at the point mentioned just now, where the lake made its escape, and where a tunnel driven through the rock has taken the place of an ancient hanging bridge. Nothing can be more striking to a geographical eye than the fact that from the point where it abuts upon the lake of Geneva (where communication is of course easier) to the point where the Rhine curves round to the north at Chur, the northern barrier of the trench offers only these three passages to the ordinary human traveller. The southern rampart, though for the most part broader, and including the highest European peaks, admits the traveller southward at several points, and is pierced by two excellent carriage roads, those of the Simplon and the St. Gotthard.