Fig. 59.—Nightjar. ⅕ natural size.
The nightjar, or goatsucker, is the representative of a type widely distributed on the earth; we have only one species, just as we have but one swift, one kingfisher, one wryneck, and one cuckoo. And, having but one, and this being so singular a bird, unlike all other species known to us, in structure, colouring, language, and habits, he excites a great deal of interest, and is very well known, although a night-bird, nowhere abundant, and a sojourner with us for only about four months and a half out of the twelve. He arrives in this country about the middle of May, and inhabits commons, moors, and stony places, and is also to be met with in woods. He is found in all suitable localities throughout Great Britain, but is more local in Ireland. Year after year he returns to the same spot to breed, faithful as the swift to its church-tower and the wryneck to its hollow tree, although the unforgotten spot may be on level waste land with a uniform surface. During the daylight hours he sits on the ground among bracken or heather, or by the side of a furze-bush, or in some open place where there is no shelter; but so long as he remains motionless it is all but impossible to detect him, so closely does he resemble the earth in colour. And here we see the advantage of his peculiar colouring—the various soft shades of buff and brown and grey, which at a short distance harmonise with the surroundings, and render him invisible. When perching on a tree he makes himself invisible in another way: his habit is to perch, not crossways on a branch, but lengthways. He rises from the ground when almost trodden on, and goes away with a silent flight, darting this way and that in an eccentric course, and looking more like a great grey mottled and marbled moth than a bird. After going a short distance he drops to earth just as suddenly as he rose. After sunset he may be seen on the borders of woods, by the side of hedges, and in meadows near the water, pursuing his insect prey, dashing rapidly along, with quick turns and doublings, as of a lapwing at play. At this hour his curious reeling, spinning, or whirring song may be heard, a little like the song of the grasshopper warbler in character; but the warbler’s song is a whisper by comparison. ‘The sound,’ Yarrell truly says, ‘can be easily imitated by vibrating the tongue against the roof of the mouth; but the imitation, excellent as it may be close to the performer, is greatly inferior in power, being almost inaudible to anyone twenty yards off, while the original can be heard in calm weather for half a mile or more.’ Of the other curious vocal performance of the nightjar the same author says: ‘On the wing, while toying with his mate, or executing his rapid evolutions round the trees, ... the cock occasionally produces another sound, which, by some excellent observers, has been called a squeak, but to the writer is exactly like that which can be made by swinging a whipthong in the air.’ Most of the names the bird is called by have reference to its summer song—spinner, wheelbird, night-churn, and churn-owl.
The nightjar deposits its two eggs on the bare ground; their colour is white or cream, blotched, mottled, clouded, and veined with brown, blackish brown, and grey. One brood is reared in the season. The return migration is in September.
A single specimen of the red-necked nightjar (Caprimulgus ruficollis), an inhabitant of South-western Europe, has been obtained in this country; and (in 1883) one specimen of the Egyptian nightjar (Caprimulgus ægyptius), was shot in Nottinghamshire.
Spotted Woodpecker.
(Great Spotted Woodpecker.)
Dendrocopus major.
Crown and upper parts black; a crimson patch on the back of the head; a white spot on each side of the neck; scapulars, lesser wing-coverts, and under parts white; belly and under tail-coverts crimson. Female: without crimson on the head. Length, nine and a half inches.
The present species is less common than the green woodpecker; and as it seldom goes to the ground, and usually confines its food-seeking to the higher branches of trees, it is rarely seen. Nor is it nearly so loquacious as the larger bird, nor so richly coloured, although handsome and conspicuous in its black-and-white dress, with a touch of glossy crimson on the nape. It frequents woods, hedgerows, and plantations, also pollard willows growing by the side of streams. It may be met with in most English counties, but in the northern counties and in Scotland it is very scarce. In Ireland it does not breed, although occasionally seen there as a migrant in winter. These migrants come from northern Europe, sometimes in considerable numbers, and are diffused over the British Islands; the birds of British race are believed to remain in this country throughout the year.
Fig. 60.—Spotted Woodpecker. ⅕ natural size.
Like most woodpeckers, this species feeds principally on insects found in crevices of the bark and decayed wood of trees. In the season he becomes a fruit and seed eater, and visits gardens and orchards to steal the cherries; and also feeds on berries, nuts, acorns, and fir-seeds. He is, for a woodpecker, a silent bird; his usual call is a sharp, quick note, repeated two or three times. The most curious sound he makes is instrumental: it is the love-call of the bird, produced by striking the beak on a branch so rapidly as to produce a long jarring or rattling note.
The eggs are laid in a hole in a tree, not always made by the bird; they are six or seven in number, and creamy white in colour.
Barred Woodpecker.
(Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.)
Dendrocopus minor.
Forehead and lower parts dirty white; crown bright red; nape, back, and wings black with white bars; tail black, the outer feathers tipped with white and barred with black; iris red. Length, five and a half inches.
When Yarrell wrote that the neglect of the name of barred woodpecker, which had been used by some authors for the present species, was to be regretted for brevity’s sake, it was a pity that he did not go so far as to reintroduce it in his great work. For doubtless many a writer on birds has groaned in spirit at the necessity laid upon him to use two such cumbrous names as great, or greater, spotted woodpecker, and lesser spotted woodpecker. Partly on this account I lament Yarrell’s timidity, and partly for a personal reason, since my boldness in using the neglected name will be taken by some readers as an exemplification of the familiar truth that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But no one will deny that the book-names of these two woodpeckers are bad, and to some extent misleading, since the birds are as unlike in markings as they are in size. The first is as big as a fieldfare, and is spotted; the second is scarcely larger than a linnet, and is distinctly barred.
The barred woodpecker is found in most English counties as far north as York; in Scotland and Ireland it is a rare straggler. It is nowhere common, and appears to be even rarer than it is, owing to its small size and its habit of frequenting tall trees. Its usual note is a sharp chirp, resembling that of the blackbird when going to roost; its love-call, as in the case of the spotted woodpecker, is instrumental, and produced in the same manner. The sound varies in tone and pitch according to the character of the tree performed on, and has been compared to the sound made by an auger when used in boring hard wood; also to the creaking of a branch swayed by the wind.
The barred woodpecker in most cases makes a nesting-hole for itself in the branch or trunk of a soft-wooded tree. Six or seven smooth, creamy white eggs are laid.
Green Woodpecker.
Gecinus viridis.
Fig. 61.—Green Woodpecker. ⅙ natural size.
Upper parts olive-green; rump yellow; under parts greenish grey; crown, back of the head, and moustaches crimson; face black. Female: less crimson on the head; moustaches black. Length, thirteen inches.
The chief characteristic of this beautiful woodland bird is his extraordinary energy. His entire structure, from the straight, sharp, powerful bill, and long, barbed tongue, to the climbing feet and stiff tail-feathers, used as a support to the body when clinging vertically to the trunk of a tree, is admirably adapted to the laborious trade he follows. And this peculiar form has its correlative in a strength, boldness, and determination in attacking a hard piece of work that are nothing less than brilliant. One is astonished at the force of the sounding blows he delivers on the tough bark and wood in his search for hidden insects; yet this is one of the common, small, everyday tasks of his life, and not comparable to the huge labour of digging a breeding-hole deep into the heart of a large branch or trunk of a tree. This energy and intensity of life shows itself also in his motions, gestures, and language. His very qualities of eagerness and determination in splitting up the wood in which his prey lies concealed, and the loud racket he is compelled to make at such times, call upon him the undesirable attentions of the species that are his enemies: he must, when hammering on a tree, be exceedingly vigilant all the while, less some prowling sparrow-hawk or swift-descending falcon shall take him unawares. The wood he exerts his strength on does not absorb his whole attention: his eyes are all the time glancing this way and that, and on the slightest appearance of danger he is nimble as a squirrel to place the trunk or branch between himself and a possible enemy. After a few moments of hiding his red head becomes visible as he peeps cautiously round the trunk, and if the danger be then over he goes back to his task. In the presence of a winged enemy he finds his safety in clinging to the trunk, round which he can move so rapidly, as on the wing he is a heavy bird; but hawks are now rare in England, and his chief persecutors are men with guns.
The language of the green woodpecker, or yaffle, as he is called in the southern counties, adds greatly to his attractiveness; his ringing cry is a sound to rejoice the hearer. Many of the woodpeckers have extremely powerful voices, and the cry of the great black woodpecker of continental Europe has been described by one familiar with it as being like the ‘yell of a demon.’ This ‘demon’ must, I imagine, be a very blithe-hearted one, and its ‘yell’ an expression of wild, joyous, woodland life which we should be glad to listen to in England. Our bird’s voice is not so powerful; but who has not been made happier for a whole day by hearing his ‘loud laugh,’ as one of our old poets has called his cry? It is a clear, piercing sound, so loud and sudden that it startles you, full of wild liberty and gladness; and when I listen for and fail to hear it in park or forest, I feel that I have missed a sound for which no other bird cry or melody can compensate me.
This species is found in woods and parks throughout England as far north as Derbyshire and the south of Yorkshire; farther north he is very rare as a breeder, and in Ireland is only known as a straggler. In seeking his food he climbs obliquely up the trunk, until, having mounted to the higher branches, he passes with a dipping flight to the next tree, invariably alighting near the roots. In summer he feeds a great deal on the ground, especially on ants, of which he is very fond. The breeding-hole is usually made in a soft-wooded tree; it is carried straight to the heart of the wood, and is then extended downwards to the depth of about a foot. In most cases it is found that the heart of the tree selected by the birds is rotten, although outwardly no signs of decay may appear. The hole ends in a chamber in which the eggs are deposited on a slight bed of chips; the eggs are four to seven in number, are oval in form and have pure white polished shells. The young when fledged come out of their cell in the tree’s heart, and creep about the bark for some days before they are able to fly.
The same breeding-hole is used for several years, if not taken possession of by a pair of marauding starlings, which not unfrequently happens.
Wryneck.
Iÿnx torquilla.
Upper parts reddish grey, irregularly spotted and lined with brown and black; a broad black and brown band from the back of the head to the back; under parts dull white, tinged with buff, and barred with dark brown, except on the breast and belly, where the markings become arrow-headed in form; outer web of the quills marked with rectangular, alternate black and yellowish red spots; tail-feathers barred with black zigzag bands; beak and feet olive-brown. Length, seven inches.
Fig. 62.—Wryneck. ⅓ natural size.
The wryneck is placed by anatomists next to the woodpeckers, and is like them in the form of its feet and the habit of perching vertically on the trunks of trees; but he does not dig into the wood with his beak, nor does he support himself with his tail, the feathers of which are soft, as in most perching birds. He is a singular bird, differing from all others in form, colouring, language, and habits. His variously coloured plumage, so curiously and beautifully barred and mottled, is most like that of the nightjar; but his beauty appears only when he is seen very near. At a distance of twenty-five or thirty yards he is obscure in colouring, and is more remarkable for his attitudes and gestures, when seen on a tree trunk deftly and rapidly picking up the small ants on which he feeds. When thus engaged he twists his neck, turning his head from side to side in a most singular manner; hence the name of wryneck. When taken in the hand he twists his neck about in the same manner, and hisses like a snake, as he also does when disturbed during incubation; and on this account he has been called snake-bird. When held in the hand he sometimes swoons, and appears to be dead until released, whereupon he quickly recovers and makes his escape. Even more characteristic than his contortions, hissings, and ‘death feignings,’ is his voice. It is an unmistakable and familiar sound of early spring, as distinctive as the shrill cry of the swift and the cuckoo’s call—a clear, high-pitched, far-reaching note, reiterated many times—a sound that makes itself heard at a distance of a quarter of a mile. As a rule, this note is heard a few days before the cuckoo’s call, and on this account the wryneck is known in the southern counties, where he is most common, as the cuckoo’s mate, or messenger, or boder, and is also called the cuckoo’s maid.
The wryneck feeds chiefly on ants and their larvæ, and, like the green woodpecker, he goes to the anthills on commons and uncultivated grounds; the insects are taken with the long, retractile tongue, which is covered with an adhesive saliva, and which the bird, when feeding, darts out and withdraws with lightning rapidity.
A hole in the trunk of a tree, often near the roots, is a favourite nesting-place. The eggs are seven to ten in number, and are deposited, without any nest, on the rotten wood. They are pure white, and have glossy shells. The same breeding-hole is used year after year.
The wryneck is most common in the southern and south-eastern counties; in the West of England and in Wales it is rarer. In the northern counties of England it is also rare and local; in Scotland it does not breed, and in Ireland it is not known.
Kingfisher.
Alcedo ispida.
Fig. 63.—Kingfisher. ¼ natural size.
Back azure-blue; head and wing-coverts bluish green spotted with azure-blue; under and behind the eye a reddish band, passing into white, and beneath this a band of azure-green; wings and tail greenish blue; throat white; under parts rusty orange-red. Length, seven and a half inches.
The kingfisher is by far the most brilliantly coloured bird in the British Islands; and those who see it living and moving with the sunlight on it can form an idea of the wonderful lustre of many tropical species, which certainly cannot be done by gazing on the labelled pellets of dead and dimmed feathers, called ‘specimens,’ in cabinets and museums. Unhappily, this rare splendour of the kingfisher, which gives it value, has served only to draw destruction upon it. As Yarrell long ago said, it is persecuted chiefly because of its beauty, and the desire to possess a stuffed specimen in a glass case. It is found in suitable localities throughout Great Britain where it has not been exterminated to gratify the vile taste that prefers a mummy to a living creature. In Ireland it is rare and local as a breeding species, but as an autumn and winter visitor is found throughout the country. It frequents streams and rivers, and the margins of lakes, and, more rarely, the seaside. It is a solitary bird, and, like the dipper, restricts itself to one part of the stream where it gets its food. Day after day it returns to the same perch, where it sits watching the surface, silent and immovable as a heron. It looks out for its prey both when perched and when flying at a height of a few feet above the surface, and often hovers motionless for a few moments before darting down into the water. With the minnow it captures held crossways in the beak it flies to a perch, and, after beating it against the branch or stone, swallows it, head first, sometimes tossing it in the air and catching it as it falls. It also preys on aquatic insects and small crustaceans. The pairing-time is early, and in February or March the birds make choice of a breeding place, usually near their fishing-ground, but sometimes at a distance of a mile or more from the water. A hole is dug in a bank to a depth of from one to three or four feet; but sometimes the birds find a hole suited to their purpose, or a cavity under the roots of a tree growing on an overhanging bank, which they occupy. The hole made by the birds has an upward slope, and ends in a chamber about six inches in diameter. Here is formed the nest, of the strangest material used by any nest-making bird. The kingfisher, like the owl and cuckoo and many other species, casts up the indigestible portions of its food—the minute bones of minnows in this case—in the form of small pellets. The pellets are thrown up in the nest-chamber, and, when broken up and pressed down by the sitting-bird, are shaped into a cuplike nest. The eggs are six to eight in number, pure white and translucent, and globular in form.
Probably the kingfisher pairs for life, as the same breeding-hole is used year after year, although the two birds are not seen together out of the breeding season.
The cry is a shrill but musical piping note, two or three times repeated, somewhat like the sandpiper’s cry.
Two specimens of the belted kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon), an American species, have been obtained in Ireland.
Three other birds remain to be noticed in this place; they are members of three distinct families, and are amongst the most beautiful of the rare occasional visitors seen in our country:—
The roller (Coracius garrula), a jay-like bird, blue and chestnut-brown in colour. It breeds in Southern and Central Europe, and is known only as a rare straggler in the British Islands.
The bee-eater (Merops apiaster)—A good many examples of this elegant and richly coloured bird have been obtained in England. It is an abundant species in Southern Europe, where it breeds in colonies in sandbanks, like our sand-martin.
The hoopoe (Upupa epops).—This species has some claim to a place among British birds, as it is an annual visitor to our country, although in small numbers. It is a singular and beautiful bird, and it is sad to think that, but for the persecution it has encountered year after year, it would most probably have established itself as a regular breeding species in the southern counties of England.
Fig. 64.—Hoopoe.
Cuckoo.
Cuculus canorus.
Upper parts bluish ash, darker on the wings, lighter on the neck and breast; under parts whitish with transverse dusky streaks; quills barred on the inner webs with oval white spots; tail-feathers blackish, tipped and spotted with white; beak dusky, edged with yellow; orbits and inside of mouth orange yellow; iris and feet yellow. Young: ash-brown barred with reddish brown; tips of feathers white; a white spot on the back of the head. Length, thirteen and a half inches.
Fig. 65.—Cuckoo. ⅙ natural size.
There are many cuckoos in the world, and in some countries it would be possible to see three or four, or even half a dozen, distinct species in the course of a single day. We have but one, and have made much of it. ‘Perhaps no bird,’ says Yarrell, ‘has attracted so much attention, while of none have more idle tales been told.’ And he might have added, that of no other bird so much remains to be known. Our cuckoo interests us in two distinct ways: he charms us, and he affects the mind with his strangeness. He is a visitor of the early spring, with a far-reaching, yet soft and musical, voice, full of beautiful associations, prophetic of the flowery season. To quote Sir Philip Sidney’s words, applying them to a feathered instead of to a human troubadour: ‘He cometh to you with a tale to hold children from their play and old men from the chimney-corner.’ Seen, this melodist has the bold figure, rough, feathered legs, and barred plumage of a hawk. This fierce, predacious aspect is deceptive: he is a timid bird, with the climbing feet of the woodpecker and wryneck. Strangest of all, the female has the habit of placing her eggs in other birds’ nests, forgetting her motherhood, a proceeding which, being contrary to nature’s use, seems unnatural. It reads like a tale from the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ in which we sometimes encounter human beings, good, or bad, or merely fantastic, who wander about the world disguised as birds. Only when we see and handle the cuckoo’s egg placed in the hedge-sparrow’s, or pipit’s, or wagtail’s nest, when we see the large hawk-like young cuckoo being fed and tenderly cared for by its diminutive foster-parent, do we realise the extraordinary nature of such an instinct. In spite of this ‘naughtiness’ of the cuckoo, to speak of it in human terms, it is to all a favourite, ‘the darling of the year,’ and from the days when the oldest known English lyric was written—
to the present time the poets have found inspiration in his fluting call; and musicians, too, owing to that unique quality of his voice which makes it imitable and harmonious with human music, vocal and instrumental.
The cuckoo does not usually arrive in this country before the middle of April, but he is sometimes two, and even three weeks earlier. The males arrive first, and it is they that utter the well-known double call that gives the bird its name. The cry of the female, a curious prolonged bubbling sound, is heard less frequently.
One of the strangest facts in the strange history of this bird is that its egg is not laid in the nest in which it is found, but is carried by the cuckoo in her bill and placed there. It is very small for so large a bird, although much larger, in most cases, than the eggs it is placed with, as its favourite nests in this country are all of small birds—the hedge-sparrow, reed-warbler, pied wagtail, and meadow-pipit. The eggs are very variable, being dull greenish or dull reddish grey, with spots and mottlings of a deeper shade. In some instances the cuckoo’s egg resembles in colour the eggs it is placed with, and it is thought by some naturalists that the female cuckoo invariably deposits her eggs in the nests of one species. As a rule, only one egg is laid in a nest, and a few days after the eggs are hatched the young cuckoo gets rid of his foster-brothers by getting them on to his back, which is broad and hollow, and throwing them over the side of the nest. If any unhatched eggs remain in the nest, he gets rid of them in the same way.
The food of the cuckoo is exclusively insectivorous, and consists in large part of hairy caterpillars, which most birds refuse to touch. The indigestible portions of the food he swallows are cast up in small pellets.
By August the old birds take their departure; the young migrate one to two months later.
No fewer than three exotic cuckoos have been placed on the list of British birds. Two of these are American species: the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus) and the black-billed cuckoo (C. erythrophthalmus). The third is the great spotted cuckoo (Coccystes glandarius), an African species, which visits Spain in summer, and, like our bird, is parasitical, but has the habit of depositing its eggs in the nests of various species of the crow family.
Barn-Owl.
Strix flammea.
Beak yellowish white; upper parts light tawny yellow minutely variegated with brown, grey, and white; face and lower plumage white, the feathers of the margin tipped with brown. Length, fourteen inches.
The barn-owl is one of the very few species that have almost a world-wide range. It is resident throughout the British Islands, and inhabits the greater part of Europe; it extends to Africa, including Madagascar; to India and America, and to the Malaysian, Australian, and Polynesian regions; and is found in islands so widely separated and far removed from the mainland as the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape de Verde. The short-eared owl has a distribution just as wide, or even wider; but that bird, wherever found, is of a wandering habit, making his home and breeding-place wherever food is abundant, and staying not where it fails him. His action resembles, only on a vaster scale, that of the nomads of the human race, who break up their camp and move away from the district that no longer affords pasture to their cattle. Thus, in the case of this species, the vagrant habit may be held to account for so extensive a range. But the barn-owl’s universality cannot be accounted for in the same way, since he is, in most countries, a stay-at-home bird, and spends his whole life, from year’s end to year’s end, in the same spot. We can only conjecture that at some former and very remote period in the history of his species he, too, had a vagrant disposition; or else that he is a very ancient bird on the earth, and has had unlimited time to get so widely dispersed; also, that the barn-owl is one of those rare types that can exist unaltered in a great variety of conditions. One of our domestic birds, the goose, affords an instance of the unchangeableness of some types in all regions of the globe; but the goose has been carried everywhere by adventurous white men, while the barn-owl, by means unknown to us, has distributed himself over the earth.
Fig. 66.—Barn-Owl. ⅐ natural size.
Another general remark about this most strange and fascinating fowl may be made in this place. The barn-owl, being so widely distributed, and in many countries the most common species, and being, furthermore, the only member of its order that attaches itself by preference to human habitations, and is a dweller in towns as well as in rural districts, is probably the chief inspirer and object of the innumerable ancient owl superstitions which still flourish in all countries among the ignorant. His blood-curdling voice, his whiteness, and extraordinary figure, and, when viewed by day on his perch in some dim interior, his luminous eyes and great round face, and wonderful intimidating gestures and motions, must powerfully affect the primitive mind, for in that low intellectual state whatever is strange is regarded as supernatural.
Before sitting down to write this little history I went out into the woods, and was so fortunate as to hear three owls calling with unearthly shrieks to one another from some large fir-trees under which I was standing, and, listening to them, it struck me as only natural that in so many regions of the earth this bird should have been, and should still be, regarded as an evil being, a prophet of disaster and death.
The barn-owl takes up his abode by preference in a building of some kind—an old ruin, a loft in a barn or an outhouse; but above most sites he prefers an ivyclad church-tower, on which account he has been called the church-owl. He also inhabits caves and holes in cliffs, and hollow trees in woods. He spends the daylight hours, standing upright and motionless, dozing on his perch; and, where he is persecuted, he does not stir abroad until dark. When he is not molested he leaves his hiding-place before sunset, and is so little suspicious of man as to appear like a domestic bird in his presence. He preys on mice, rats, moles, insects, and even fish, which he has been observed to take in his claws from lakes and ponds. The indigestible portions of the small animals he swallows—the fur, feathers, bones, wing-cases, and scales—are disgorged in compact round pellets about the size of a cob-nut; and from an examination of a vast number of such pellets, it would appear that about nine-tenths of the food of this owl consists of mice.
This fact is now so generally known that the owl, from being one of the most persecuted of birds, is becoming a general favourite; and farmers who formerly shot it, and nailed it, with outspread wings, to their barn-doors, in order that all might see and admire their zeal in ridding the earth of so misshapen a pest, are now only anxious to have the ‘feathered cats’ living in their barns again.
The owl makes no nest, and lays from two to six eggs, which are white and nearly round. It has the curious habit of laying two or three eggs, and, long after incubation has begun, laying others, and then others again, so that young of different ages and eggs not yet near hatching may be found in the nest together. The young make a curious snoring noise, which is their hunger cry; and it has been said that this cry is also occasionally uttered by the old bird on the wing.
Long-eared Owl.
Asio otus.
Beak blackish; eyes orange-yellow; upper parts buff, finely mottled with brown and grey, and streaked with dark brown, especially on the ear-tufts; facial disk buff, with a greyish black margin and outer rim; under parts warm buff and grey, with blackish streaks and minute transverse bars. Length, fifteen inches.
The long-eared owl may be described as a bird of beautiful plumage. The hues of the upper parts—various shades of yellow, buff, and brown, harmoniously disposed—and something, too, in the indeterminate pattern, remind us of the colouring of some of the very handsome cats. This cat-like colouring, long tufts of ear-like feathers, and large, round, fiery, yellow eyes, give the bird a singular and uncanny appearance. As a vocalist he is less interesting than the two other most common British species—the white owl, with its sepulchral shriek, and the tawny owl, with its mellow hoot—that mysterious sound of the deep woods at eventide. The commonest note of the present species is a mewing cry, heard when the birds begin to stir from their hiding-places before going out to forage. It also emits at times a short, barking cry.
The long-eared owl appears to be more gregarious than other species, except, perhaps, the short-eared owl. Mr. Abel Chapman writes: ‘A peculiarity of the habits of these owls after the breeding-season deserves a remark. As soon as the young were fledged the whole of the owls associated together, perhaps three or four broods, old and young, in a single family, and chose a thick black Scotch fir for their abode. Here they all passed the day. To this particular tree the whole of the owl-life of these woods resorted regularly at dawn, and in it slept away the hours of daylight, hidden amongst the deep evergreen recesses. At the particular tree of their choice (it varied in different years) the owls could invariably be interviewed during the summer and autumn, though to a casual eye it was difficult, amidst the deep shadows of the foliage, to distinguish their slim forms, pressed closely against the brown branches of the pine. Towards dusk their awakening was notified by the querulous cat-like cry; ten minutes later their silent forms appeared outside the wood, and, after a few rounds of preliminary gyrations, it was dark enough to commence operations in earnest.’
Long-eared Owl. Chaffinch. Great, Blue, and Coal Tits. Goldcrest.
Field-mice and rats are its principal food; it also preys a good deal on insects, and kills more small birds than does the white owl. It is an early breeder, laying its eggs in the deserted nest of a crow, magpie, rook, or heron, or in a squirrel’s drey, or even making use of the slight platform-nest of the wood-pigeon. The eggs are four to six in number, nearly round in shape, and have smooth white shells.
Short-eared Owl.
Asio brachyotus.
Face whitish; beak black; iris yellow; tufts on the head small, composed of black feathers; eyes encircled by brownish black; upper parts dusky brown edged with yellow; under parts dull yellow streaked with brown. Length, fifteen inches.
In its habits the short-eared owl offers a strong contrast to the species last described. It is a bird of the moors and fens, laying its eggs on the ground, and never, or very seldom, perches on trees. In appearance it is less owl-like and uncanny-looking than the long-eared owl, the colouring and markings being less rich, the head smaller, and the ear-tufts so small that at a distance of twenty-five yards they are scarcely visible. It is migratory in its habits, and as it arrives on the east coast at the same time as the woodcock, it is often called the woodcock-owl.
As a winter visitant it is found in most places in the British Islands, but it breeds with us only in Scotland and a few localities in the north of England. As I have said in the history of the barn-owl, the present species ranges over a large portion of the globe, and on the continent of America it is found from Greenland to the Straits of Magellan. It is not so nocturnal in its habits as the majority of owls, and may often be seen, an hour or two before sunset, beating over the rough ground like a hen harrier in search of prey. It feeds on small rodents of all kinds, and on birds. The eggs are three to five in number, and in some instances as many as seven or eight are laid, and are placed in a slight clearing among the herbage on marshy ground, or under the heather on a moor.
There is some variety in the language of this species: it hisses and makes a sharp clicking sound when angry, and has a loud, startling cry, a note repeated three or four times, like a ghostly laugh; and it also hoots, this performance sounding like the baying of a dog in the distance.
An interesting and curious fact in the history of this owl is that it is known to appear, often in considerable numbers, in any district where, owing to a great increase of field-mice or other small rodents, its favourite food is for the time abundant. This phenomenon has been observed in various parts of the world, in this country on several occasions; and during the late great plague of short-tailed voles in the south of Scotland (1891–92), large numbers of short-eared owls appeared, and remained to breed in the district. As long as the plague lasted they remained in the country, and were most prolific. When the voles disappeared the owls departed.
Tawny Owl.
Syrnium aluco.
Beak greyish yellow; iris bluish dusky; upper parts reddish brown, variously marked and spotted with dark brown, black, and grey; large white spots on the scapulars and wing-coverts; primaries and tail-feathers barred alternately with dark and reddish brown; under parts reddish white, with transverse brown bars and longitudinal dusky streaks; legs feathered to the claws. Length, sixteen inches.
The tawny owl, named also brown owl and wood-owl, is by a little the largest of the four British species. In his colouring, as well as his woodland habits, he comes nearest to the long-eared owl, but he has no ear-tufts like that bird to add to his strangeness, nor is he in appearance so ghostly and grotesque as the white owl. This species alone of the British owls is unknown in Ireland. In England, Wales, and the south of Scotland it is to be met with in all well-wooded districts, and in some localities it is said to be the most common owl. But, unhappily, in many places where it was formerly common it has been extirpated by gamekeepers. Owls are not very social birds, and the tawny owl is the most unsocial of all. He inhabits the deep wood, where he lives solitary or with his mate, and he is said to be very jealous of the intrusion of another individual of his species into his hunting-grounds. His chief distinction is his powerful, clear voice: heard in the profound silence of the woods at eventide the sound is wonderfully impressive, and affects us with a sense of mystery. This may be due to imagination, or to some primitive faculty in us, since the feeling is strong only when we are alone. If we are in a merry company, then the wood-owl’s too-whit, too-who, may even seem to us ‘a merry note,’ as Shakespeare described it.
The tawny owl sometimes breeds, like the barn-owl, in ruins, outhouses, disused chimneys, and such places; but the usual site is a hollow tree, all the more liked if it is overgrown with ivy. Sometimes he takes possession of a deserted nest of a magpie or crow to breed in. The three or four eggs laid are white, and nearly round in shape.
The tawny owl is strictly nocturnal in habits, and preys on mice, rats, moles, young rabbits, squirrels, and birds; and he also, like most owls, occasionally takes fish.
Besides the species described, no fewer than seven others have been included in books on British birds, and if these seven were not rare accidental visitors to our island we should indeed be rich in owls. It will be sufficient to give their names:—
- Snowy owl (Nyctea scandiaca).
- European hawk-owl (Surnia ulula).
- American hawk-owl (Surnia funeria).
- Tengmalm’s owl (Nyctala tengmalmi).
- Scops owl (Scops giu).
- Eagle owl (Bubo ignavus).
- Little owl (Athene noctua).
It is possible that the last species may one day come to be ranked as a British bird, like the pheasant and red-legged partridge, as several attempts have been made to introduce it into this country, first by Waterton, in 1843; and, in recent years, by Mr. W. H. St. Quintin in Yorkshire, and Mr. Meade-Waldo in Hampshire.
Hen Harrier.
Circus cyaneus.
Upper parts of adult male bluish grey; lower parts white; beak black; irides reddish brown; legs and feet yellow; claws black. Female: upper parts reddish brown; under parts pale reddish yellow, with deep orange-brown, longitudinal streaks and spots. Length: male, eighteen inches; female, twenty inches.
This very handsome and graceful hawk was fairly common within recent times in the British Islands. But the incessant persecution of all birds of prey by game-preservers is having its effect. It is plain to see that as British species they are being extirpated; and the first to vanish are the harriers, owing to their fatal habit of breeding in the open country on the ground. For while most birds have a close time allowed them, the hawks are sought out and destroyed, old and young, during the breeding season. Thus the marsh-harrier, which should have come first in this place, is now extinct in this country, and cannot be introduced into a work on British birds which does not include the great auk, the bustard, the spoonbill, and many other species which have been exterminated in England. The hen harrier is at the present time very nearly in the same case; it is only included here because a few pairs probably still breed on the wildest and most extensive moors in Wales, the north of England, and the Highlands of Scotland.
The nest is a slight hollow in the ground, scantily lined with a little dry grass; and the eggs are four or five, and rarely six, in number. These are pale bluish white in colour, and in some cases have pale brown markings.
The male hen harrier, seen on the wing when quartering the ground in quest of prey, keeping but a few feet above the surface, is certainly one of our handsomest hawks. Its flight, although not wavering, is as buoyant as that of the common tern, and the pale colouring—soft blue-grey above and white beneath—seems in harmony with its slender figure and airy, graceful motions. On account of its blue colour it has been called the dove-hawk. It preys on small birds, mammals, and reptiles, dropping suddenly upon them in the manner of the kestrel, but from a less height. The origin of its name of hen harrier is not known. Yarrell conjectured that it was on account of its predilection for the produce of the farmyard; which seems unlikely, as the harriers are usually hunters of very small deer. A more probable explanation is that the male bird was formerly supposed to be the female of the ringtail-harrier; but we know now that the hen harrier is the cock bird, and the ringtail the hen.
Montagu’s Harrier.
Circus cineraceus.
Fig. 67.—Montagu’s Harrier. ⅑ natural size.
Upper parts bluish grey; primaries black; secondaries with three transverse dark bars; lateral tail-feathers white barred with reddish orange; under parts white variously streaked with reddish orange. Female: upper parts brown of various tints; under parts pale reddish yellow, with longitudinal bright red streaks. Beak black; legs and feet yellow. Length, eighteen inches.
This hawk was named by Yarrell after the well-known ornithologist, Colonel Montagu, who was the first to distinguish between this species and the hen harrier, which it so closely resembles. Seen on the wing at a distance of two to three hundred yards, the sharpest-sighted ornithologist would probably be unable to say whether the bird was a hen harrier or a Montagu’s harrier. The present species is slimmer bodied; but, owing to the greater comparative length of its wings, it appears, when flying, as large as the hen harrier. It is a spring and summer visitor to this country, and in its flight, and preying and breeding habits, closely resembles the species last described. Small birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects form its prey. It breeds, or formerly bred, in suitable localities in most English counties from the south coast northwards to Norfolk, making its slight nest on the ground, among the furze-bushes or heather. The eggs resemble those of the hen harrier in colouring, but are smaller in size.