A blackbird proceeded calmly to take his bath in the fountain.—[p. 30].
Christchurch Meadow is a favourite home of the Titmice. I believe that I have seen all the five English species here within a space of a very few days: English, not British, for there is one other, the Crested Tit, of which I shall have more to say in another chapter. A family of Longtails, or Bottle-tits, flits from bush to bush, never associating with the others, and so justifying its scientific separation from them. Another family is to be seen in the Parks, where they build a nest every year. These delightful little birds are however quite willing to live in the very centre of a town, indifferent to noise and dust. A Marsh-tit was once seen performing its antics on a lamp-post in St. Giles. A Great-tit built its nest in the stump of an old laburnum, in the little garden of Lincoln College, within a few yards of the Turl and High Street; the nest was discovered by my dog, who was prowling about the garden with a view to cats. I took great interest in this brood, which was successfully reared, and on one occasion I watched the parents bringing food to their young for twenty minutes, during which time they were fed fourteen times. The ringing note of this Great-tit or his relations is the first to be heard in that garden in winter-time, and is always welcome. The little Blue-tit is also forthcoming there at times. One Sunday morning I saw a Blue-tit climbing the walls of my College quadrangle, almost after the manner of a Creeper, searching the crannies for insects, and even breaking down the crust of weathered stone. Among memories of the rain, mist, and hard work of many an Oxford winter spent among these gray walls, “haec olim meminisse juvabit.”
But I have strayed away from Christchurch Meadow and the Botanic Garden. Here it is more especially that the Thrush tribe makes its presence felt throughout the autumn. In the Gardens the thrushes and blackbirds have become so tame from constant quiet and protection, that, like the donkeys at Athens of which Plato tells us, they will hardly deign to move out of your way. A blackbird proceeded calmly to take his bath, in the fountain at the lower end near the meadow, one morning when I was looking on, and seemed to be fully aware of the fact that there was a locked gate between us. Missel-thrushes are also to be seen here; and all these birds go out of a morning to breakfast on a thickly-berried thorn-bush at the Cherwell end of the Broad Walk, where they meet with their relations the Redwings, and now and then with a Fieldfare. The walker round the meadow in winter will seldom fail to hear the harsh call of the redwing, as, together with starlings innumerable, and abundance of blackbirds, they utter loud sounds of disapproval. There is one bush here whose berries must have some strange ambrosial flavour that blackbirds dearly love. All the blackbirds in Oxford seem to have their free breakfast-table here, and they have grown so bold that they will return to it again and again as I teasingly walk up and down in front of it, merely flying to a neighbouring tree when I scrutinize them too closely in search of a lingering Ring-ousel. Who ever heard of a flock of blackbirds? Here, however, in November, 1884, was a sight to be seen, which might possibly throw some light on the process of developing gregarious habits.[9]
Rooks, Starlings, Jackdaws, and Sparrows, which abound here and everywhere else in Oxford, every one can observe for themselves, and of Sparrows I shall have something to say in the next chapter; but let me remind my young readers that every bird is worth noticing, whether it be the rarest or the commonest. My sister laughs at me, because the other day she found an old copy of White’s Selborne belonging to me, wherein was inscribed on the page devoted to the Rook, in puerile handwriting, the following annotation: “Common about Bath” (where I was then at school). But I tell her that it was a strictly accurate scientific observation; and I only wish that I had followed it up with others equally unimpeachable.
But more out-of-the-way birds will sometimes come to Oxford, and I have seen a Kestrel trying to hover in a high wind over Christchurch Meadow, and a Heron sitting on the old gatepost in the middle of the field. Herons are often to be seen by the river-bank in Port Meadow; and it was here, some years ago, that Mr. W. T. Arnold, of University College, was witness of an extraordinary attack made by a party of three on some small birds. Port Meadow constantly entices sea-birds when it is under water, or when the water is receding and leaving that horrible slime which is so unpleasant to the nose of man; and in fact there is hardly a wader or a scratcher (to use Mr. Ruskin’s term)[10] that has not at one time or another been taken near Oxford. Sometimes they come on migration, sometimes they are driven by stress of weather. Two Stormy Petrels were caught at Bossom’s barge in the Port Meadow not long ago, and exhibited in Mr. Darbey the birdstuffer’s window. And a well-known Oxford physician has kindly given me an interesting account of his discovery of a Great Northern Diver, swimming disconsolately in a large hole in the ice near King’s Weir, one day during the famous Crimean winter of 1854-5; this splendid bird he shot with a gun borrowed from the inn at Godstow. During the spring and early summer of 1866, our visitors from the sea-coast were constant and numerous. Even the beautiful and graceful little Tern (Sterna Minuta) more than once found his way here; and on the second occasion saved his own life by the confidence which he seemed to repose in man. ‘I intended to shoot it,’ wrote a young friend of mine, ‘but relented when I saw how tame and trustful it was.’
Specimens of almost all such birds are to be seen in the bird-cases of the Museum, and occasionally they may be seen in the flesh in the Market. Both Market and Museum will give plenty to do on a rainy day in winter:—
Ubi jam breviorque dies et mollior aestas
Quae vigilanda viris!
