British birds

By their voice, too, birds are distinguished from the rest of the animal creation. Though there may be legends of singing serpents and of talking monkeys, a harsh scream or a growl is the only manifestation of the emotions through the voice which exists until we arrive at man. Among birds, the possession of a melodious voice is limited to that group which we term the Passeres. Other birds can scream or utter a dull note, while many are mute. So flexible is the voice organ of these creatures that they are the only animals that can imitate human speech. Here, however, it is not only the Passeres which can imitate the essential attribute of man. The Parrots, of course, are always supposed to be the birds which can talk, but this is far from being the truth. The hoarse utterances of most Parrots are left far behind in clearness of sound and correctness of imitation by the little Indian Mynah, which may be usually seen at the Zoological Gardens, and heard to speak. But the Parrot cannot sing. These are the only two groups of birds which have so elaborate and flexible an organ of voice. From this it might be inferred that some peculiarities of mechanism would distinguish the organ in question of these birds, and that is what we actually find to be the case. But, oddly enough, it is not only those birds which have a beautiful voice whose voice organs are so elaborate in structure. The harsh croak of the Raven issues from a syrinx which is as delicately fashioned as that which allows of the exquisitely varied tones of the Nightingale. The word ‘syrinx’ has been mentioned; that is the technical term for the voice organ of the bird, which is formed from a part of the windpipe, as in man and the mammalia, but from a different part of that tube. In man and in mammals the voice organ is placed in the throat just a little way down, at the prominence often spoken of as ‘Adam’s apple.’ This is a wider part of the tube, with larger rings of cartilage, which contains a pair of tightly stretched membranes that can be made to vibrate and cause a sound. In the bird, the voice organ is situated farther down, at the very point where the trachea forks into the two bronchi, one for each lung. Here are figures which illustrate the voice organ of a singing-bird (figs. 15, 16, 17). At this forking of the trachea the rings of the tube, which are of gristle or cartilage, become somewhat different in form. In the middle is a piece, which is often converted into bone, like the ‘three-way’ piece used to fix together the stick and the hoop of cane of a butterfly-net. To the upper side of this, and therefore within the tube, and directed upwards, is a little crescent-shaped piece of membrane (h, fig. 17); this can be set vibrating by the stream of air passing up and down the windpipe. At the sides of the syrinx there are shown in the figure (fig. 16) three pairs of muscles; these when they contract shorten the syrinx, and of course produce alterations in the note, just as the shortening of the tube in a cornet alters the sound. In many passerine birds, and in most other birds, there is only one pair of these muscles; but the Parrots agree with the passerines in having several pairs of muscles, and therefore a more easily alterable syrinx. In a good many birds there are no muscles at all in this place; for example, in the Storks, which have not by any means a flexible voice. The syrinx, in fact, is one of those organs which show a great deal of difference in different kinds of birds. But it is never entirely absent, though rather rudimentary in the Ostrich. The Australian Emu has a curious way of producing its sounds which is not found in any other bird. The cock and hen Emus can only be recognised by their voice, which is duller in the hen and sharper in the cock. When the bird is uttering its note, it seems almost to come from somewhere else, and not from the throat of the bird; the bird is something of a ventriloquist. The sound, which is a low bellow, is produced by a bag of skin opening into the windpipe some way up the neck; a current of air passing down the tube is believed to set the air in this bag in vibration, just as the air in a key may be caused to vibrate by blowing over its edge. Generally speaking, the windpipes of birds are straight tubes running to the lungs by the shortest route; but in the Cranes, and in a few other birds, the pipe is coiled upon itself once or twice, and the coils are even hidden in an excavation of the breast-bone. The increased length of tube gives a louder and more resonant note, such as we know characterises the Crane.

Lungs and Air-sacs.

It is not only by virtue of their powerful muscles and stiffened fore limbs that birds can fly. The body is rendered lighter in proportion to its bulk by air-cavities, which permeate everywhere, even into the substance of the bones. So thorough is this aëration in the Screamer of South America, that when the skin of the recently dead bird is roughly pressed it crackles. Curiously enough, there seems to be no very definite relation between the degree of thoroughness to which the aëration of the body is carried out and the capacity for flight. The Screamer, that has just been mentioned, is fuller of air-cavities than the Frigate-bird, in which the art of flying is carried to the highest extreme—the ‘triumph of the wing,’ as Michelet says in ‘L’Oiseau.’ Anyone who has the opportunity of dissecting a Hornbill will be struck by the large and abundant air-spaces between the muscles. This applies even to the Ground Hornbill of Abyssinia; and yet the latter, as its name denotes, lives upon the ground, while the flight of other hornbills is heavy and most unsuggestive of lightness of body. These air-spaces are in direct communication with the windpipe. It is much easier to understand their arrangement by the actual dissection of a bird. We must first get a notion of the position and form of the lungs, which differ very much from the lungs of other animals. In a rabbit, for example, or any other mammal, the lungs lie freely on each side of the heart, and are capable of being pushed here and there after the body is opened, and of much expansion and diminution of volume during the movements of respiration. But the lungs of all birds are tightly fixed to the wall of the chest cavity, being, as it were, moulded on to the ribs and vertebræ; when they are carefully picked away from their place, they retain the impressions of the bones which they touch. There is no great possibility here of independent movements on the part of the lungs. Respiration is effected in a totally different manner; it is, in fact, bound up with the mechanical filling of the air-spaces. Each of the two lungs is contained within a large compartment, which is bounded externally by an obliquely disposed septum, often spoken of, on account of its direction, as the ‘oblique septum.’ Others call it the diaphragm, imagining that it is the equivalent of the diaphragm in the mammal, that partly fleshy, partly tendinous plate which shuts off the cavity of the chest, in which lie the heart and lungs, from the cavity of the abdomen, in which lie the intestines, stomach, and liver. Now, this oblique septum does not by any means closely invest the lungs; on the contrary, a deep space is thereby shut off, at the bottom of which are the lungs. This cavity is subdivided by two partitions into three separate compartments. It requires a very skilful manipulation to show the fact, but it can, with care, be demonstrated that each of these compartments is lined by a delicate membrane, which is continuous with the lung, and is actually a kind of bubble, as it were, blown out of the lung; these delicate sacs are the air-sacs. There are altogether nine of them, but all these sacs do not lie within the cavity bounded by the oblique septa. The largest pair of all the abdominal air-sacs project into the body cavity far behind the gizzard. Now these sacs are fairly easy to see in a dissection; but it is not so easy to make out that they are all of them, except the middle two, connected with a system of ramified air-spaces which, as already said, permeates the body generally, lying among the viscera, between the muscles below the skin, and deep into the actual interior of the bones. But though it is difficult to see this by a dissection, it is easy enough to prove it by inflating them. If a syringe is passed down the windpipe and tied carefully into it, so that no air can escape at the sides, and air is blown down the tube, the passage of the air into the skin and other parts can be followed; if a bone be cut across, the air can be noticed to issue from the cut surface; and if the experiment be varied by using a coloured fluid instead of air—which is pumped in by a syringe—the fluid can be seen to ooze from the end of any bone or muscle that has been cut across. A bird, therefore, when it takes in a deep breath, not only supplies its lungs with fresh air, but fills its whole body with the superfluous air. It has been proved that a bird can continue to breathe if it be held under water, and only the end of a broken limb allowed above the surface; for, as all the spaces of air are in communication with the lungs, they (the lungs) can obviously be as conveniently filled from one end as from the other. When you are bathing, and take a very deep breath as you are swimming, you can detect a sensible increase in the buoyancy of the body; in a bird, of course, the difference is enormous, after the sacs are filled, from a condition of comparative emptiness. The way in which a bird breathes is different from the way in which a human being breathes. There is, of course, the essential resemblance that is shown between all animals that have definite organs which are set apart for respiration: the feathery gills of the marine worms, the closely set branchiæ of the fish, the lungs of the bird and of the mammal, are all constructed upon one plan, so far as essentials are concerned. In all of them blood-vessels are brought into close relation, though not into actual contact, with water or air containing oxygen. The blood-vessels are separated from the water or air by the thin membranes of the lungs or gills, through which the oxygen can pass in to the blood, and the carbonic acid and effete gases can pass out; it is this exchange which is the essential act of respiration. We cannot, however, in this book pretend to go into general matters of this kind, which would take us too far from the subject at hand; but anyone who would pursue this further can consult Professor Huxley’s ‘Elementary Physiology,’ or any other elementary text-book upon physiology. When a mammal—a human being, for example—breathes certain muscles are called into play. If a person is watched, it will be seen that the chest expands during inspiration, and that its calibre diminishes during expiration. What happens is this. The lungs are contained in a cavity which contains no air. This cavity can be increased in size in two directions. When the ribs are moved out—which they can be by the movements of the muscles called intercostal, which lie between them—the cavity of the chest from before backwards is evidently enlarged. On the other hand there is the diaphragm, which we have already spoken of as bounding the chest cavity below. Now this diaphragm is muscular, with a tendinous centre. When the muscles contract, like all muscles do, the surface of the diaphragm, which was before rather convex towards the chest cavity, becomes more flat; hence the cavity lying above it, i.e. the chest cavity, becomes larger in a downward direction also. When it is increased in this way by the action of the two separate sets of muscles, some space—more space than before—is left between its walls and the lungs which lie within it; it follows, therefore, that, as there is no air in the cavity, the pressure of air outside the body forces more air into the lungs, because there is no counterbalancing pressure to prevent this. The principle is the same in the bird, but the details are different. If you will turn again to the bird’s skeleton, you will see that the backbone and ribs and sternum form a bony box, which is jointed in the middle; this acts precisely like a pair of bellows: the bones at top and bottom represent the wood, and the soft intervening leather of the bellows is represented by the muscles which lie between, and which connect the sternum with the abdomen and with the ribs. When these muscles contract, the sternum is obviously brought nearer to the backbone, and air is expelled from the inside; when they are relaxed, a vacuum is created and air rushes in. The air-spaces, then, are really ramified tags of lung which have no blood-vessels in their walls, and are therefore not meant for respiration, but serve as reservoirs of air, lightening the body of the creature. It is curious that birds are not the only animals which possess expansions of lung that are apparently useless for breathing purposes. The lungs of the Chameleon have quite similar sacs appended to them. There is, it is true, no such complicated a ramification as that which we find in the bird, but still there is no doubt that the structure is of the same nature. It looks almost like a first step in the path towards a bird. Very possibly the extinct Pterodactyles, which flew through the woods of the middle ages of the earth, had bodies lightened in the same or a similar way; for we know that their bones have thin walls, the large cavity of which in all probability contained air-sacs. Even some of the jumping Dinosaurs, to which reference has already been made, seem to have possibly had lungs constructed on the bird type. We see, therefore, that even where a bird is, so to speak, most characteristically a bird—in the subsidiary mechanisms of flight—it betrays a likeness to the comparatively grovelling reptile, letting alone the aërial and more bird-like Pterodactyles.

Brain.

The brain of birds is large in proportion to the body, thus contrasting with that of the unintelligent reptile. From some tables on the matter which have been published, it appears that, if weight of brain goes for anything, the goldfinch is one of the most intelligent of birds. The weight of its brain is one-fourteenth of the entire weight of the body. The most unintelligent of all is the domestic fowl, whose body is 412 times heavier than its brain. The size of brain, however, seems to be largely a matter of the size of the bird: generally speaking, the smaller birds have heavier brains, and vice versâ. One might have expected something from the apparently intelligent Parrot; but the brain of the ‘Amazon’ is only one forty-second part of the weight of its body. Even the cruel and bloodthirsty Hawk, which one associates with brutality and ignorance, has a brain which is but little heavier.

The front part of the organ, known as the cerebral hemispheres, or, more briefly, as the cerebrum, is that part of the brain which is associated with intelligence. Now among the mammals this part of the brain is generally much furrowed, the brain surface being, therefore, increased without any actual increase in the skull-space required. This furrowing is met with in most mammals, but not always in the smaller and in the less intelligent kinds. But in the bird’s brain there are no convolutions: the surface is as smooth as in the reptile. Not even in the artful Raven, which some hold as the most highly developed of birds, is there a trace of the furrowing which one rightly associates, so far as the mammalia are concerned, with a high position in the series. The hinder part of the brain is known as the cerebellum; between this and the cerebrum are the optic lobes, of which there are only two, the mammals having four. From the brain arises the spinal cord, or marrow, which runs in the canal formed by the vertebræ, just as the brain lies in the brain-case. The nerves of the body come off either from the brain or the marrow, but it is not important to enumerate them. They show no difference in different kinds of birds.

The Muscles.

The muscles of a bird are what is popularly known as its flesh. When the skin is removed, the bones are seen to be covered by a mass of this flesh, which is of a red colour, darker in some birds than in others. For instance, in a Duck the colour is a dark red; in a Pigeon, quite a pale brown. The flesh is not, however, merely a thick sheet covering the bones: it can be separated into layers which are themselves made up of a number of separate pieces of muscle. These individual muscles are very commonly of a spindle-like shape, being thickest in the middle and dwindling towards both ends, where they often end in a tough substance called the tendon, which has a glistening and very characteristic appearance. All muscles are not of this form—sometimes they are strap-shaped; and not all of them end in tendons. As the most important act of the bird’s life that depends upon its muscles is flying, it is not surprising to find that the muscle which effects the downward stroke of the wing is the largest. This muscle is known as the great pectoral, and it is said to be almost as large as all the other muscles of the body put together. The way in which a muscle effects the movements of the bones to which it is attached is by contracting. All muscles are able to contract; they shorten, and, accordingly, the ends, with whatever they happen to be attached to are brought closer together. The contraction is governed by the nerves, and it has been discovered that the nerves actually end in communication with the fibres of which the muscle is composed. This pectoral muscle lies on the breast-bone, and nearly completely covers it; indeed, only the edge of the keel appears, and a very little tract at the sides. When this muscle is dissected away another muscle, not nearly so large, comes into view underneath it; this is called the pectoralis secundus, or the second pectoral. Its action is precisely the reverse of that of the great pectoral: it pulls the wing up instead of down. Between them, these two muscles do most of the work in flying. Naturally, in the ostrich tribe, which do not fly, they are much reduced in bulk. But they are never absent altogether, even in the Apteryx, which is, perhaps, further removed from the possibilities of flight than any other bird.

A very curious muscle runs into the patagium of the wing, which is that fold of skin which lies between the shoulder and the hand. This muscle is called the patagial muscle. It starts from the shoulder as a fleshy band, but soon ends in two long tendons: one of these follows the upper margin of the patagium, and finally ends in the wrist; the other passes down over the patagium, and ends below in connection with some of the muscles of the arm, and also by being attached in a fan-shaped way to the skin itself. The function of this muscle is to assist in the folding up of the wing when it is, so to speak, put away after use. The tendons in which the latter part of this muscle ends often show a most complicated branching in the patagium; they frequently offer characteristic differences in different birds, and are made some use of by the systematist. The bird has got a biceps to its arm just as we have. It sometimes happens that this biceps gives off a muscular slip, which runs into the patagium and becomes attached to the upper of the two tendons of the patagial muscle. A good deal of stress is laid by certain ornithologists as to whether this biceps slip is absent or present. Several of the common British birds will afford material to the beginner to ascertain for himself some of the chief variations in these and the other muscles of the body. It will be a good exercise to get a few birds, and to carefully dissect two of them, belonging to as widely different kinds as possible, side by side. You might select, for instance, a Crow and a Pigeon, which are fairly extreme types. To revert to our account of the muscular anatomy of a bird, it will be impossible to attempt any comprehensive account of this branch of the subject, because the facts are so appallingly numerous. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with the mention of a highly characteristic bird muscle which occurs in the leg. This muscle is known as the ambiens. This muscle is thin and ribbon-like. It takes its origin from a little process of the pubic bone usually called the prepubic process. From this point it runs along the inside of the thigh until it reaches the knee; it then bends over the knee and comes out on the other side, where it runs down the leg to join the deep flexor muscle of the foot. When this ambiens muscle contracts it pulls upon the flexor muscle, already referred to; the effect of this is that the toes are brought together by the tendons in which the last-mentioned muscle ends. The ambiens is far from being universally present among birds. It is notably absent from the passerine birds (the Sparrows, Crows, Rooks, and small perching birds generally), and from the Hornbills, Toucans, Woodpeckers, and that varied assemblage known as picarian birds. On the other hand, the Storks, Hawks, and most of the larger birds, have the muscle. But among some of these it is absent; thus, the Owls on the one hand, and the Herons on the other, have no ambiens; but from their general resemblance in other particulars to birds which have an ambiens, it was thought by Professor Garrod that the loss in them was a recent event, and that they might be fairly placed in one great group of birds with an ambiens which he termed, somewhat lengthily, the ‘homalogonatæ,’ or normal-kneed birds, reserving the name ‘anomalogonatæ,’ or abnormal-kneed birds, for the passerines, &c., without an ambiens.

CLASSIFICATION.

One great advantage of the study of birds is that the amount of facts to be learnt in anatomy is far less than with some other groups. They are wonderfully uniform in structure. There is less difference in structure between an ostrich and a humming-bird than between, say, a lizard and a crocodile. Though this may be gratifying to the student of birds who is content with a broad knowledge of anatomical fact, it has its disadvantages—very distinct disadvantages—to those who want to arrange and classify the species. As there are computed to be over eleven thousand different kinds of birds, it is clear that an arrangement of some kind is wanted; we must have an artificial brain in which to store the characters of each bird in their proper place. But before we can consider this it is necessary to consider first what place birds as a whole occupy in Nature. It used to be thought that warm-blooded birds ought to be put near to the warm-blooded mammals. But it is now the general opinion that, as we have before pointed out in relation to certain details of structure, their proper place is in the neighbourhood of the reptiles. In fact they are regarded as a separate division of an order of vertebrated animals which has received the name of Sauropsida, which signifies ‘lizard-like’ animals.

Now, as to these eleven thousand, how are they to be divided? To this simple question innumerable answers have been given—it is hardly an exaggeration to say as many answers as there are ornithologists. Every part of the body has had its turn in affording a base for a classificatory scheme. At first, and with the older generation, it was bill and claw; then came a period of bones; later the muscles were held to be all-important; at present the fashion is in favour of taking all characters into consideration, which is clearly a more reasonable way of looking at the matter. The reason for the divergences of opinion—which implies great difficulty in the subject—is that birds are so modern a race. They are now at their heyday of development. By-and-by, when gaps appear in the now serried ranks, classification will be an easier matter; for classification, after all, is an artificial, unnatural sort of thing, if we believe in a gradual modification of species out of pre-existing species. It is not too much to say that, the more perfect our scheme of classification, the greater our ignorance of the group classified. If the only birds known to science were a Hornbill, a Duck, and a Crow, together with a few of the immediate allies of each, we could easily sort them. But there are so many intermediate forms which absolutely decline to fit accurately into any system. Then the would-be systematist has to distinguish between those characters which imply a deep-seated relationship and those which are only due to similar needs. The aim of classification is, of course, to indicate real relationship, not merely to pigeon-hole in a convenient way. Real relationship is often masked by superficial differences. For instance, the common blindworm of our hedgerows is not, as might be thought, a snake, but a lizard; it appears to be unlike the lizard in having no legs, and to be so far a snake. Indeed, the terror inspired by this peaceful reptile must stand it in good stead with any except human foes. But its whole anatomy is built upon the lizard, and not upon the snake, plan. We disregard, therefore, in a scheme of classification the likeness to a snake, remembering that in Nature, as in morals, appearances are apt to be deceptive. The owls, among birds, are believed by many to offer an instance of the same kind of deception. By all the older systematists, and by many of the more modern, they are placed with the hawks in one group. No doubt the owls bear a certain likeness to the hawks. They have formidable claws and a hooked and powerful beak; they kill their prey; and only differ superficially in that they love the darkness, while the hawks hunt by day. Now, in certain details of anatomy, particularly in the windpipe and the muscles, the owls are much more like that division of birds which includes the goatsuckers. The mention of this latter family brings us face to face with another difficulty. If the superficial likeness of the owls to the hawks is to be distrusted, as merely due to a similar mode of life, and therefore to the development of certain structures which are in direct relation to that mode of life, how about the superficial likeness of the owls to the goatsuckers, which is almost as well marked as to the hawks? In Australia and other parts of the East there are two genera of goatsuckers which have received the names of Podargus and Batrachostomus. These birds are wonderfully like owls. They have the same brown-and-grey and soft plumage; their flight is equally noiseless—and, altogether, anyone who saw the living Cuvier’s Podargus recently on view at the Zoological Gardens might well be pardoned for thinking it an owl. The fact is that we must be careful not to be prejudiced in any direction. Superficial similarities may or may not go with real likeness. Speaking generally, one should be disposed to lay greatest stress upon characters which have no obvious relation to mode of life as likely to be of the most use in indicating blood relationship. It is easier, however, to lay down general principles of this kind than to apply them to birds. As has been already mentioned, birds are so uniform in anatomy that in such characters as brain, lungs, and other internal organs which are not so directly under the immediate influence of their surroundings, there is but little difference. Such characters afford no help to the systematist. We are obliged, therefore, to rely upon other and really less important points.

In most books upon ornithology—in this one, for instance—the scheme of classification is set forth in the shape of a list beginning with one particular group and ending with another. This is merely due to the physical properties of sheets of paper. A linear scheme is really an impossibility; to represent classification properly we want a solid diagram, showing how from a root-stock branches arose and pushed their way in every direction. Another defect of the linear scheme is that we must begin somewhere and end somewhere. In this book we begin with the Passeres and end with the Parrots; others start with the Accipitres, in spite of the protest of Michelet against placing the cowardly, flat-headed, stupid hawks at the summit of bird creation. It doesn’t matter where we begin or where we end as long as we carefully bear in mind that a linear classification is only a convenient way of briefly stating certain facts, and that it does not pretend to be a copy of Nature. An alternative method of expressing the facts of structure in space of two dimensions is the Stammbaum, originally made in Germany; but this inevitable tree of life is open to the serious objection of undue dogmatism; and besides, it must be inaccurate, as it is not in three dimensions. A given naturalist may have strong reasons for believing, let us say, that the Struthious birds represent the lowest bird stock, from which arose in a regular series of branches, independently, and alternately from one side or the other, the various groups into which we divide the class in the present book; if so, then the Stammbaum is easily constructed. But the general consensus of opinion is that the inter-relationships of the different groups cannot be expressed with so much simplicity. It is clear that, in any case, the most modified offshoots must occupy the highest branches of the tree, and that we may in a linear scheme conveniently begin or end with them. But it is impossible to arbitrate as to which group is the most specialised. It is, on the whole, agreed that the Ostrich tribe have retained more primitive characters than other birds; but is the elaborate voice-mechanism of the Nightingale, or the almost human intelligence of the Raven or Parrot, to rank first as evidence of high position, i.e. specialisation, remoteness from the original stock? This is a matter about which everybody can legitimately have an opinion; and we cannot at present formulate a creed—for those, that is to say, who are acquainted with the facts.

The scheme that I adopt here is the same as that which Mr. Hudson uses in the pages which follow; it is the plan followed in the B.O.U. list, and approved by most ornithologists in this country as a convenient working outline. I have added to it the fossil groups, and those groups which do not occur in Great Britain. The main scheme is that of Dr. Gadow, used in his valuable account of the anatomy of birds in Bronn’s ‘Klassen und Ordnungen des Thierreichs.’ There is no deep-seated and mysterious reason for my placing Parrots at the end of the Aves Carinatæ: it is simply sheer inability to place them anywhere in particular.

CLASS. AVES.

• Sub-class I. Archæornithes (contains genus Archæopteryx only).
• Sub-class II. Neornithes.
• Division i. Neornithes Ratitæ.
• Order i. Ratitæ (contains Struthio, Rhea, Dinornis, &c.).
• Order ii. Stereornithes (contains a few fossil genera, Gastornis, Dasornis, &c.).
• Division ii. Neornithes Odontolcæ.
• Order i. Hesperornithes (the extinct Hesperornis and Enaliornis).
• Division iii. Neornithes Carinatæ.
• Order i. Ichthyornithes (fossil Ichthyornis only).
• Order ii. Passeres (thrushes, swallows, flycatchers, tits, &c.).
• Order iii. Picariæ (rollers, cuckoos, hornbills, woodpeckers, swifts, colies, trogons, goatsuckers, kingfishers).
• Order iv. Striges (owls).
• Order v. Accipitres (hawks, eagles, American vultures, &c.).
• Order vi. Steganopodes (cormorants, pelicans, solan geese, frigate bird).
• Order vii. Herodiones (herons, storks, ibis, spoonbills).
• Order viii. Odontoglossi (flamingoes).
• Order ix. Anseres (screamers, ducks, geese).
• Order x. Columbæ (doves).
• Order xi. Pterocletes (sand-grouse).
• Order xii. Gallinæ (curassows, megapodes, pheasants, grouse, Opisthocomus, &c.).
• Order xiii. Tinamidæ (tinamous).
• Order xiv. Fulicariæ (rails, coots).
• Order xv. Alectorides (cranes, bustards, Cariama, &c.).
• Order xvi. Limicolæ (plovers, snipe, knots, &c.).
• Order xvii. Gaviæ (gulls, skuas).
• Order xviii. Pygopodes (auks, divers, grebes).
• Order xix. Sphenisciformes (penguins).
• Order xx. Tubinares (petrels, albatross).
• Order xxi. Psittaci (parrots).

It will be noticed that, out of these twenty-one groups into which we may divide the Neornithes Carinatæ of Gadow, only three are not represented in Great Britain, viz. the Sphenisciformes, Psittaci, and Tinamiformes. So that the student of bird anatomy in this country has plenty of chance of making himself acquainted with the main outlines of structure of the entire class of living birds. Out of the thirty-two minor divisions of these birds, no fewer than twenty-one are to be met with in these islands; and of those that are not, some are quite easy to get hold of—a parrot, for instance.

Missel-Thrush, or Stormcock.
Turdus viscivorus.

Upper parts ash-brown; under parts white, faintly tinged with yellow, marked with numerous black spots; under wing-coverts white; three lateral tail feathers tipped with greyish white. Length, eleven inches.

There are six British thrushes. Of these the missel-thrush and blackbird are residents throughout the year; the song-thrush is also found with us at all seasons, and is a winter songster, but many birds migrate; the ring-ouzel is a summer visitor; the redwing and fieldfare are winter visitors.

The missel or mistletoe thrush, or stormcock, is the largest, exceeding the fieldfare, which comes next in size, by at least an inch in length and two inches in spread of wings. This species possesses in a marked degree all the characters that everywhere distinguish the true thrushes, which are world-wide in their range. Theirs is a modest colouring:—olive-brown above, paler and spotted below; a loud and varied song, and harsh cry; a statuesque figure; rapid, startled movements on the ground, with motionless intervals, when the bird stands with head and beak much raised, in an attitude denoting intense attention; and, finally, a free, strong, undulating flight.

The missel-thrush inhabits almost the whole of the British Islands, and is most abundant in Ireland. Throughout England and Wales he is fairly common, less common in Scotland, and becoming rarer the farther north we go. He is found in all woods and plantations, but is most partial to wooded parks, orchards, and gardens, which afford him food and shelter throughout the year. He is the hardiest of our vocalists, and is better known as a winter than a summer songster. His song may be heard in the autumn, but from midwinter until spring his music is most noteworthy. Its loudness and wild character give it a wonderful impressiveness at that season of the year. He is not of the winter singers that wait for a gleam of spring-like sunshine to inspirit them, but is loudest in wet and rough weather; and it is this habit and something in the wild and defiant character of the song, heard above the tumult of nature, which have won for him the proud name of stormcock.

This thrush is an early breeder, and pairs about the beginning of February. The birds, after mating, are exceedingly pugnacious, and attack all others, large or small, that approach the chosen nesting-site. The nest is not often made in evergreens, to which blackbirds and song-thrushes are so partial; as a rule, a deciduous tree—oak, elm, or beech—is made choice of, and the nest may be at any height, from a few feet above the ground to the highest part of a tall tree; and as it is built so early in the year, when trees are leafless, it forms a most conspicuous object. Furthermore, the missel-thrush, a shy and wary bird at other times, becomes strangely trustful, and even careless, when nesting, and often builds in the neighbourhood of a house, or in an isolated tree at the roadside. When building and breeding the birds are silent, except when the nest is threatened with an attack, when they become clamorous and bold beyond most species in defence of their eggs or nestlings.

The nest is large and well made, outwardly of dry grass, moss, and other materials, woven together; it is plastered with mud inside, and thickly lined with fine dry grass. The four eggs vary in ground-colour from bluish white to pale reddish brown, and are spotted, blotched, and clouded, with various shades of purple, brown, and greyish under-markings. Two or three broods are reared in the season.

At the end of June the missel-thrushes begin to unite in small parties numbering a dozen to twenty birds, and to range over the open country, seeking their food in the pastures and turnip-fields, and on moors and commons. Where the birds are abundant much larger congregations are seen. In Ireland I have seen them in August in flocks of about a hundred birds. They do not keep close together, as is the manner of starlings and finches, but fly widely scattered, and alight at a distance apart, a flock of fifty to a hundred birds sometimes occupying half an acre or more ground. They then look very large and conspicuous, scattered over the green grass, standing erect and motionless, or hopping about in their wild, startled manner. These flocks diminish in number as the season progresses, and finally break up about midwinter.

In autumn the missel-thrushes devour the yew-berries, and the fruit of the rowan and service trees; later in the year they feed on the glutinous berries of the mistletoe, on haws and ivy-berries, and other wild fruits; but their food for the most part consists of earthworms, snails, grubs, and insects of all kinds.

Throstle, or Song-Thrush.
Turdus musicus.

Upper parts olive-brown, throat white in the middle; sides of neck and under parts ochreous yellow spotted with dark brown; under wing-coverts pale orange-yellow. Length, nine inches.

The protest and recommendation implied by the use of the first name at the head of this article may be futile; but it is impossible not to feel and to express regret that so good and distinctive and old a name for this familiar bird should have been replaced by a name which is none of these things. Song-thrush is an unsuitable name, for the very good reason that we have several thrushes, all of them songsters. By most persons the bird is simply called ‘thrush,’ which is neither better nor worse than ‘song-thrush.’

The throstle is one of the smaller members of the genus, being about a third less in size than the noble stormcock. In form, colouring, motions, language, and habits, he is a very thrush. It cannot be said that his music is the best—that, for instance, it is finer than that of the blackbird. The two songs differ in character; both are good of their kind, neither perfect. The throstle is, nevertheless, in the very first rank of British melodists, and it is often said of him that he comes next to the nightingale. The same thing has been said of other species, tastes differing in this as in other matters. It is worth remarking that most persons would agree in regarding the nightingale, song-thrush, blackbird, blackcap, and skylark, as our five finest songsters, and that these all differ so widely from each other in the character of their strains that no comparison between them is possible, and there is no rivalry.

The only species which may be called the rival of the song-thrush is the missel-thrush, as their music has a strong resemblance. That of the stormcock has a wonderful charm in the early days of the year, when it is a jubilant cry, a herald’s song and prophecy, sounding amidst wintry gloom and tempest. Heard in calm and genial weather in spring, the throstle is by far the finer songster. His chief merit is his infinite variety. His loudest notes may be heard half a mile away on a still morning; his lowest sounds are scarcely audible at a distance of twenty yards. His purest sounds, which are very pure and bright, are contrasted with various squealing and squeaking noises that seem not to come from the same bird. Listening to him, you never know what to expect, for his notes are delivered in no settled order, as in some species. He has many notes and phrases, but has never made of them one completed melody. They are snatches and portions of a melody, and he sings in a scrappy way—a note or two, a phrase or two, then a pause, as if the singer paused to try and think of something to follow; but when it comes it has no connection with what has gone before. His treasures are many, but they exist jumbled together, and he takes them as they come. As a rule, when he has produced a beautiful note, he will repeat it twice or thrice; on this account Browning has called him a ‘wise bird,’ because he can

There is not in this song the faintest trace of plaintiveness, and of that heart-touching quality of tenderness which gives so great a charm to some of the warblers. It is pre-eminently cheerful; a song of summer and love and happiness of so contagious a spirit that to listen to it critically, as one would listen to the polished phrases of the nightingale, would be impossible.

The throstle is a very persistent singer: in spring and summer his loud carols may be heard from a tree-top at four o’clock or half-past three in the morning; throughout the day he sings at intervals, and again, more continuously, in the evening, when he keeps up an intermittent flow of melody until dark. His evening music always seems his best, but the effect is probably due to the comparative silence and the witching aspect of nature at that hour, when the sky is still luminous, and the earth beneath the dusky green foliage lies in deepest shadow.

So far only the music of the throstle has been considered; but in the case of this bird the music is nearly everything. When we think of the throstle, we have the small sober-coloured figure that skulks in the evergreens, and its life-habits, less in our minds than the overmastering musical sounds with which he fills the green places of the earth from early spring until the great silence of July and August falls on nature.

The song-thrush is a common species in suitable localities throughout the British Islands, being rarest in the north of Scotland. He is found in this country all the year round, but it was discovered many years ago, by Professor Newton, that a very limited number of birds remain to winter with us. Probably they migrate by night, as the fieldfare and redwing are known to do, and, being much less gregarious than those birds, come and go without exciting attention. The fact remains that, where they are abundant in summer, a time comes in autumn when they mysteriously vanish. One or two individuals may remain where twenty or thirty existed previously; and if they only shifted their quarters, as the missel-thrushes do in some parts of the country, they would be found in considerable numbers during the winter in some districts. But the disappearance is general. I am inclined to think that this thrush migration is not so general as Professor Newton believes, and that the birds that leave our shores are mainly those that breed in the northern parts of the country. During the exceptionally severe winter of 1894–5 the thrushes that remained with us suffered more than most species, and in the following spring I found that the song-thrush had become rare throughout the southern half of England.

Nesting begins in March, the site selected being the centre of a hedge, or a thick holly or other evergreen bush, or a mass of ivy against a wall or tree. The nest is built of dry grass, small twigs, and moss, and plastered inside with mud, or clay, or cow-dung, and lined with rotten wood. This is a strange material for a nest to be lined with, and is not used by any other bird; the fragments of rotten wood are wetted when used, and, being pressed smoothly down, form a cork-like lining, very hard when dry. Four or five eggs are laid, pale greenish blue in ground-colour, thickly marked with small deep brown spots, almost black. Two, and sometimes three, broods are reared in the season.

During the day, when not singing, the thrush is a silent bird; in the evening he becomes noisy, and chirps and chatters and screams excitedly before settling to roost.

Insects of all kinds, earthworms, and slugs and snails, are eaten by the song-thrush. The snail-shells are broken by being struck vigorously against a stone; and as the same stone is often used for the purpose, quantities of newly broken shells are sometimes found scattered round it. He is a great hunter after earthworms, and it would appear from his actions that the sense of hearing rather than that of sight is relied on to discover the worm. For the worm, however near the surface, is still under it, and usually a close bed of grass covers the ground; yet you will see a thrush hopping about a lawn stand motionless for two or three seconds, then hop rapidly to a spot half a yard away, and instantly plunge his beak into the earth and draw out a worm. The supposition is that he has heard it moving in the earth. He is also a fruit and berry eater, both wild and cultivated.

Redwing.
Turdus iliacus.

Upper parts olive-brown; a broad white streak above the eye; under parts white, with numerous oblong, dusky spots; under wing-coverts and flanks orange-red. Length, eight and a half inches.

In size and general appearance the redwing resembles the song-thrush. Like the fieldfare, he is a winter visitor from northern Europe, arriving a little earlier on the east coast, and differing from his fellow-migrants in being less hardy. He is more of an insect-eater, and is incapable of thriving on berries and seeds; hence in very severe seasons he is the greater sufferer, and sometimes perishes in considerable numbers when, in the same localities, the fieldfare is not sensibly affected. Nor is he of so vagrant a habit as the larger thrush: year after year he returns to the same place to spend the winter months, feeding in the same meadows, and roosting in the same plantations, until the return of spring calls him to the north. He is partial to cultivated districts where there are woods and grass-lands, and passes the daylight hours in meadows and moist grounds near water, returning regularly in the evening to the roosting-trees.

At all seasons the redwing is gregarious, and in its summer haunts many birds are found nesting in close proximity. A good deal of interest attaches to the subject of its song, which Linnæus thought ‘delightful,’ and comparable to that of the nightingale—an opinion ridiculed by Professor Newton in his edition of Yarrell. Richard Jefferies, who found the redwing breeding and heard its summer song in England, describes its strain as ‘sweet and loud—far louder than the old, familiar notes of the thrush. The note rang out clear and high, and somehow sounded strangely unfamiliar among English meadows and English oaks.’[1]

Fieldfare.
Turdus pilaris.

Head, nape, and lower part of the back dark ash-grey; upper part of the back and wing-coverts chestnut-brown; a white line above the eye; chin and throat yellow streaked with black; breast reddish brown spotted with black; belly, flanks, and lower tail-coverts white, the last two spotted with greyish brown; under wing-coverts white. Length, ten inches.

In size and colouring, more especially in the spotted under parts, the fieldfare comes near enough to the missel-thrush to be sometimes confounded with it. Thus, flocks of missel-thrushes seen in autumn are sometimes mistaken for fieldfares that have come at an exceptionally early date to warn the inhabitants of these islands that the winter will be a severe one. The fieldfare is slightly less in size than the missel-thrush, and has a more variegated plumage, and when seen close at hand is a handsome bird.

He is one of the latest winter visitors to arrive, seldom appearing before the end of October. The return migration takes place at the end of April, or later; flocks of fieldfares have been known to remain in this country to the end of May, and even to the first week in June. Like the redwing, he is gregarious all the year round; in his summer home in the Norwegian forests he exists in communities, and the nests are built near each other. The migration is usually performed by night, and the harsh cries of the travellers may be heard in the dark sky, on the east coasts of England and Scotland, at the end of October, and in November. From the time of their arrival until they leave us they are seen in flocks of twenty or thirty to several hundreds of individuals. They do not, like the redwings, attach themselves to certain localities, but wander incessantly from place to place, ranging over the entire area of Great Britain and Ireland. Owing to this vagrancy, the fieldfare is an extremely familiar bird to the countryman, and invariably its first appearance, and harsh yet joyous clamour, as of jays screaming and magpies chattering in concert, call up a sudden image of winter—cold, brief days and a snow-whitened earth, and memories of that early period in life when the great seasonal changes impress the mind so deeply.

In open weather the fieldfares seek their food in meadows and pastures, also in the fields. Unlike the missel-thrushes, that move about in all directions over the ground, the fieldfares when feeding all move in the same direction. In like manner, when the flock repairs to a tree, the birds on their perches are all seen facing one way—a very pretty spectacle. When their feeding-grounds are frozen, or covered with snow, they go to the hedges and devour the hips and haws, and any other wild fruit that remains ungathered; if severe weather continues, they take their departure to more southern lands. Their flight is strong, easy, and slightly undulating, and before settling to feed the flock often wheels gracefully about over the field for some time.

The song of the fieldfare, described by Seebohm as a ‘wild desultory warble,’ uttered on the wing, is not known to us in this country—it is a song of summer and of love; but in genial weather, when the birds are faring well, they often burst out into a concert of agreeable sounds just after alighting in a tree.

In the evening when settling to roost they are extremely noisy like most thrushes, and their cries may be heard until dark.

Blackbird.
Turdus merula.

Black; bill and orbits of the eyes orange-yellow. Female: sooty brown. Length, ten inches.