Tom-tits in abundance come to the food-stand, which in the first instance was specially intended for their benefit. They will come more or less the whole year through if the food is left there, but, of course, many more in winter than in summer, and most of all in February and the beginning of March, when I have counted twelve on the stand at once, but the numbers fall off very quickly towards the middle of March.
I have noticed every year that at certain times of the day, especially from about 12.30 to 1.30, there is a marked increase in numbers. In winter at least no five minutes passes without one or more birds appearing, but at mid-day, and again to a lesser extent just before it begins to get dark, they seem literally to swarm.
I have found that all tits, as well as sparrows and robins, prefer a mixture of bread and fat to fat alone. During February and March, 1897, I weighed all the bread and fat consumed on the food-stand and found that it was as nearly as possible eleven pounds. Lately I have added cocoanuts to the bill of fare; they are appreciated by the tits, but blackbirds, robins and thrushes prefer the bread and fat mixture, or rather they do not seem to care at all for the cocoanuts.
It is curious to see how quickly birds discover that food has been put out on the stand. One year, after the receptacles had been empty for weeks in the summer, I put in some fat, and in less than five minutes a tom-tit was there. Another time I made a longish block of wood, bored nearly through with holes, which were filled with fat smoothed off level with the surface. This block was hung with the holes downwards, so that from above it could look like a bit of wood only. It was hung up at 10.30 a.m., and at 11.30 a tom-tit had found it out, and was eating away at the fat as he clung to the block back downwards.
Tom-tits, unlike great-tits, bully one another most unmercifully. They can recognize each other at a great distance. A tom-tit on the food-stand seems to know at once whether another arriving on the nearest tree, some ten yards or more away, is his superior or inferior in prowess. Sometimes he will ruffle up his feathers as if in resentment at threatened intrusion, at other times he is prepared to make way at once. As is the case with a herd of cows on a farm, the relative standing between them seems to be an acknowledged matter and is seldom contested. To us a couple of tom-tits appear as like as two peas if we have them actually in the hand, and though it is easy to understand that they can themselves distinguish differences at close quarters, and may have some other sense than we have to help them, yet it is a marvellous thing that they can do so without doubt or hesitation at a distance of yards.
The whole question as to how birds recognize one another is very interesting. We know that a shepherd can tell one sheep of his flock from another as easily as we can distinguish between two men, but in the feathered face of a bird there seems to us so little room for difference of expression, and, generally speaking, if we take feather by feather the description of one bird will apply equally well to any other of the same species.
Tom-tits as a rule make way for a great-tit, but I have seen them fight occasionally, and the tom-tit does not always come off second-best. They are complete masters of both marsh and coal-tits, neither of which dream of resisting them. They pay scarcely any heed one way or another to sparrows or robins.
Both tom-tits and great-tits in the flush of their spring-time ardour pay to their chosen helpmates the same delicate attentions as do robins. It is always a pretty picture to see them present their offerings of food, but with tits it seems a rather more business-like matter and to lack something of the tender sentiment so plainly shown by the robins.
Though not nearly so plentiful as tom-tits, both marsh and coal-tits are with us more or less all the year round. Of the two, perhaps the marsh-tit is the more regular, sometimes a pair seem to make the garden their headquarters and to be always about, but several years may pass without our seeing one coal-tit; then they will become almost as common as tom-tits for a year or so, when again the number will dwindle down to, it may be, a single pair.
Some years ago all four kinds of tit used to come together to the food-stand, but (with the exception of a pair of coal-tits in the winter of 1910-11) since 1899 tom-tits and great-tits have had it all to themselves, neither marsh nor coal-tits have been there, though both are still frequent visitors to the garden at all times of the year.
In June broods of young tits appear flying from tree to tree in little parties. The old birds tirelessly hunt for food, whilst the greeny-yellowy little ones sit expecting and cheeping among the boughs.
In comparing the marsh and coal-tits together one might imagine that they each originally had the same amount of black allowed them for the head, but while the marsh-tit preferred to have all his in one patch at the back, the coal-tit would have a bit cut out to make a bib for his chin! Of the two the marsh-tit is my favourite. I like the delicate tints of its more sober colouring better than the more contrasted yet more commonplace colours of the coal-tit.
There seems something savouring of meanness about coal-tits; they are cautious and artful and carry away their food presumably to store, there is not time to have swallowed it before they are back again at the stand.
A pair of coal-tits that were here one winter seemed quite demoralised by the food-stand, and to have altogether given up hunting for their natural food.
Both kinds are perfectly amicable together, but a marsh will make way for a coal-tit. The marsh-tit seems to excite special animosity in tom-tits, whilst the coal-tit watches his opportunity, and, nipping in just at the right moment, escapes much persecution. Of the two the coal-tit has a more musical voice and a greater variety of notes, but once (in 1899) when watching a party of marsh-tits, I heard, besides the usual harsh note, a kind of continuous warble every now and then, which I could attribute to no other bird, though I could not actually see a marsh-tit uttering it.
The delightful little wrens are always with us, and the loud, clear ringing notes of their sweet song may be heard almost throughout the year. In July, when most birds are silent, the wren does his best to make up for it, he seems to take a pleasure in having the field to himself, and his song may be heard, and often his alone every day until the middle of August. By that time some of the robins, having recovered from their moult, begin to tune up, and the wren leaves it to them to keep the ball going whilst he retires from the scene to complete his own change of feather. Apparently with such a tiny body to cover that is not a long business, for his bright little voice may be heard again early in September. I always myself feel inclined to say "thank you" at the conclusion of a wren's musical effort, and have been surprised to find that there are people, it may be many people, who do not hear his song at all of themselves, and when their attention is specially drawn think it "only a bird squeaking!"
Wrens never seem to be tame in the same way that robins are, nor do they ever attempt to get at the food on the stand, or to share in the fowls' meals, but they often come close to the windows, creeping up and down the frames, in quest of spiders and other small game.
A sight was reported to me the other day that I would have given a good deal to have seen with my own eyes. When for two days in January (1912) the ground was thickly covered with snow, I put a plate of scraps for the birds in the open porch. In the evening of the second day of snow, when the maid went to light the porch lamp, she saw this plate, as she described it, full of wrens (little birds with their tails turned up over their backs, she called them); there must have been, she thought, certainly not less than fifteen of them. When they saw her they flew off in a flock to the creeper outside, just where for two or three years there has been a wren's nest. Perhaps this little company was made up of the family that owned that nest as their home. In was in 1909 that a wren first built there among the stems of the Virginian creeper close to the front door. The body of the nest was quite hidden between the creeper and the wall, the little entrance-hole alone being visible. We constantly saw the bird going in and out, taking a turn to stretch his wings or bringing home provisions for his household, and often he would sit close by and give vent to his feelings in a joyous burst of song. He appears to have been pleased with the success of his first venture on this site, for he has used the very same nest for the last two years.
A wren has the same directness of flight as a kingfisher or a dipper; it has none of the up and down course of most small birds, but it follows a bee-line to its destination, with rapidly-beating wings, but making comparatively slow progress. I was much struck by this, as one day I watched a wren fly from a low bush to a height of 40 or 50 feet up a poplar, it seemed to take quite an age to get there.
Pied wagtails never entirely desert us, though, of course, there are many more, and they are much more in evidence, in summer than in winter. It is a continual pleasure to watch them, to see the speed with which they run in pursuit of a fly, the deftness of the capture, and the satisfaction so plainly displayed at the feat, by the eloquent balancing of the long tail. One day in August (1899) I watched a wagtail through a glass, and distinctly saw him capture and devour four "daddy-long legs" in succession. Besides running after them on the ground, they will often fly up at insects in the air.
Pied wagtails are no respecters of persons as far as other birds are concerned; I have seen a single wagtail at one time pursuing a peewit, at another a sandpiper, and their encounters with swallows on the grass are most amusing to watch. When the swallows are flying low the wagtails will deliberately fly at them and even for a little way after them.
A family of pied wagtails usually take possession of the lawn opposite one of our windows, and we can observe the process of education in the art of catching flies, from the stage in which the young are content to be fed entirely by their parents through that in which they supplement the supply by their own efforts, until finally little difference in skill is to be noticed between old birds and the young. This family appear to resent the intrusion of other birds on their domain (as shown in their behaviour towards swallows), and I have seen them persistently drive away young yellow wagtails who presumed to trespass on their hunting ground.
Yellow wagtails are not so often seen in the garden, though they are plentiful enough in the neighbourhood. They are lively and attractive and their bright colour contrasts strongly with the freshly ploughed earth so that their arrival is always noticed by the farmers and seems to interest them more than the coming of any other migrant except the cuckoo.
Meadow pipits are common in the fields around, but I cannot remember ever to have seen one actually in the garden. On a rough bit of ground near the Ship Canal bridge they are always to be found, and I have watched one there for twenty minutes or more at a time as he soared up to a considerable height, singing all the time, and then came down again to the ground with wings and tail spread out, after the manner of a tree-pipit, with a little musical twitter just as he landed. It kept repeating this performance over and over again all the time I was there.
For some years a tree-pipit used to take up his abode with us every summer and give us the benefit of his energetic song. I was very much amused once to watch him on some iron hurdles at the end of the garden. He was so much in earnest and so full of energy; he would sing a little bit, then run along the top rail a little way, then sing again, and so on until he had gone nearly the whole length of the railings. This entertainment he went through day after day for a fortnight or more at the end of June and the beginning of July.
Spotted flycatchers have not been as common with us lately as they were at one time, when they always made their home here during their summer visit to this country, and were constantly in evidence. We have not had a nest for several years, and last year (1911) I did not see a single flycatcher in the garden, but this year, I am glad to say, they have come back again and there has been a nest in the ivy on the house wall. It was placed so low down that we could easily look into it, but never once did I surprise the old bird; she seemed to hear one's footsteps at a distance, and long before one reached the nest she was off. The young were hatched on June 29th, but their eyes did not open until July 6th. Whilst they were blind and as they grew bigger the nest seemed much too small for them, and often one fancied two of them must inevitably have been smothered, as they were quite hidden under the other three. Even after they could see there was some confusion during the heat of the day; but it was one of the prettiest sights imaginable when they were tucked in for the night; all five heads with their sharp little beaks and bright black eyes were arranged in perfect order, all looking together in the same direction out of the nest. People in the village call these birds by the name of "old man," and it seems expressive, somehow peculiarly appropriate to their greyish colouring and quiet unobtrusive manners.
For five years running a pair of flycatchers built in a fork of a thick ivy-stem on the old church tower. They chose a most exposed place by the side of a walk trodden by dozens of visitors to the church nearly every day of the summer. The first time we noticed it (in 1894) the nest was so low and so exposed that nothing could save it. In 1895, when it was placed higher up and better concealed, the young were successfully reared. In 1896 they chose a position actually not more than three feet from the ground, and yet, marvellous to relate, owing to watchful care on the part of human friends, and the continual replacing of a screen of ivy leaves, they scored another success. In 1897, though the site was higher up and apparently much safer, the young birds were taken, but in 1898 they were again able to escape the attentions of cats and boys and bring off their brood without mishap; in 1899 they wisely abandoned the dangerous situation altogether.
I was once watching a flycatcher perched on the food-stand opposite and close to my open window, when I noticed that besides a constantly-repeated weak single note, it had every now and then a cadence of two and again of three notes, and sometimes a very faint kind of inward warble.
The iron boundary hurdles on the south side of the garden are a favourite stand for flycatchers, and I have seen them busily occupied there in catching flies, which they carried to their young ones in the trees near by, whilst every now and then the prettily-marked youngsters would themselves come down to the top rail and sit there to be fed. Croquet hoops on the grass near these hurdles seem to have a great attraction for them. Two, sometimes three, would be there at the same time. After each pursuit of a passing fly they would return now to the same hoop, now to another, and sometimes they seemed to go the round of all the hoops in turn. Every day throughout the summer they would be there, and in the white line under each hoop was left indisputable evidence of their regular occupation.
Towards the end of July, 1902, we were much interested in a pair of flycatchers with their little family of three. One of the old birds would spend its time catching flies for the young ones, whilst the other rested, sitting quite unconcerned by itself on the rails. When the working parent brought a fly to one of the family the other two would hurry up, and there was constantly a small crowd of four gesticulating little birds in one part or other of the lawn. Between the intervals of being fed the young birds learnt to forage for themselves, not, I noticed, flying off the ground after insects, but running after them on the grass. These five birds stayed with us until September 9th. They often flew down from the trees to catch flies on the grass, and would hover in front of shrubs and tall plants whilst they picked off the flies near them.
When flycatchers have been on the croquet hoops and swallows were flying low, they had not seldom to get pretty sharply out of the way to avoid a collision, as the swallows appeared purposely to fly at them.
In 1908 we were fortunate enough to see a bird here that is very seldom found in Cheshire, namely, a pied flycatcher. It was in the evening of August 25th that we saw it. The strange little bird came quite close up to the French window of the room in which we were sitting, and we noticed plainly the white patch on his wing. It did not seem at all shy, and I watched it about the house for an hour or so.
It is said in "The Fauna of Cheshire" that while birds are sometimes seen during the spring migration, there is no other record of a pied flycatcher in Cheshire on the return journey in autumn.
Of swallows there is no lack. Nearly every year there are one or two nests in the outbuildings, and in 1900 a pair began to build against the wall of the house porch just over the front door. The wall was perfectly flat, and they began to fasten mud against it as a house-martin would have done. To save possible untoward consequences to the hats of visitors I rigged up a shelf over the door; this, perhaps, frightened them, at any rate, they did not go on with their work.
In 1908 a pair set their minds on building in the old church, and build they did in spite of all we could do in the way of keeping doors and windows shut (they must have found their way through some broken quarry of a window). However, when we saw that we were beaten we made the best of it, and really there was very little mess, and it was pleasant to hear them warbling in the roof. When the young birds were hatched in July the old ones were more wary than ever. If they saw anyone in the church, instead of going on to the nest, they would turn back and fly away with their mouthful of dainties. However, by hiding, I managed to see the nestlings fed, and noticed that though they were very vociferous when they guessed there was an immediate prospect of their hunger being satisfied, a warning note from the old bird seemed to silence them at once.
For a good many years a pair of swallows have nested in the porch of the new church, and in 1910 an old trimmed straw hat that hung on a nail in an outbuilding at the church-house was chosen by another pair as a suitable foundation for their nest, and in this rather strangely-placed nursery they brought up a young family.
There is something very charming in the swallow's warbling song, beyond its association with warm and beautiful weather; and when in autumn they are congregating by thousands, to hear them all chanting together as they fill the air, and, sailing round and round in widening and interlacing circles, mount higher and higher until the highest are almost out of sight, is to my mind wonderfully grand and impressive.
Sometimes the swallows melt away without any noticeable gatherings, while in other years they assemble in such flocks about the end of September that in certain favourite hunting grounds the sky is almost darkened by them, and to watch the intricate maze of perpetual motion is enough to make one giddy, while as at intervals they sit resting, they seem to stretch away for miles in long lines on the telegraph wires.
Swallows and wagtails apparently grudge one another (and flycatchers) a share in their insect sporting rights, if their mutual spitefulness has any meaning. This common taste for the same kind of food often brings the three into close quarters, and it is curious to notice the different methods they use to compass the same end; the swallow ceaselessly rushing at full speed through the air, the wagtail trusting to his nimbleness of foot, and the flycatcher making a series of little excursions upwards after his prey. I have seen swallows walking about on the grass and picking up flies, and when their young ones are resting on the ground they will often bring them food there, alighting by the side first of one and then of another.
Ten years ago it was only on two or three houses in the village that house-martins built, and they were seldom seen except in the immediate neighbourhood of these, but now (1911) they have become comparatively abundant everywhere. The wooden hay-sheds recently put up at many of the farms seem to have attracted them in the first instance, but when once they were led to look more closely into the matter they evidently found that there were many more eligible building sites in Warburton than they had had any idea of before. They have never yet made their real home with us, but during the latter part of the summer they come in crowds to the garden, and there are among them many only just able to fly, who spend most of their time on the roof of the house, waiting to be fed.
Two house-martins fell down a bedroom chimney here, and when I opened the window to let them out, whilst one took advantage of it at once the other kept flying round and round quite close up to the ceiling and resting on a bell-wire that ran across. It was a long time, more than half an hour, before I could persuade him that he was looking in the wrong place for a way of escape.
At one time after the Ship Canal had been begun and traffic had ceased on the river, a large colony of sand-martins established themselves under the disused towing-path almost opposite, and naturally they were then plentiful enough. Now, as far as we are concerned, the river with all its belongings is a thing of the past, and it is only occasionally that we see the little brown birds hawking for flies in the garden.
I was surprised not long ago to find in a field-sandpit, a mile away from any other sand-martins' nests that I knew of, a solitary nest in a hole within easy reach of my hand. The young must have been hatched, for I watched the birds go in with food.
Sand-martins have a peculiar interest as being perhaps the most universally distributed of all small birds. One likes to think that nearly everywhere one went, in Asia, Africa or America, the very same little brown swallows might be seen ceaselessly flitting about, bringing back to mind the green fields and cloudy skies of home in England.
Only once have I seen that other cosmopolitan, the tree-creeper, in the garden. One morning in May, 1895, I heard a strange, small, rather shrill song and found that it came from a little brown tree-creeper on an oak just opposite my window. I watched it for some time through field glasses as it climbed about, prying into every crack of the bark and singing as it worked.
Although I have never myself seen a goldfinch in the garden, they have been seen here, and on the rough ground near the Ship Canal they are not uncommon, indeed, I have heard of several shillings a week being made by birds that have been caught there in spite of County Council orders. They are usually known here as "red linnets," but another Cheshire name for them is "nickers."
Greenfinches (green linnets in Cheshire) abound; in early spring they are more than usually conspicuous, as in their brightest feather they pursue one another in and out among the hollies and dark yew hedges. Though then less evident to the eye, throughout the summer they let us know by their unmistakable and wearisome notes that they are with us still.
As early as April 29th, in 1890, I watched a greenfinch on a thorn opposite my window feeding what appeared to be a fully-fledged young one. It was pumping up the food from its craw, in the same way that a pigeon does. The end of April is so unusually early for a greenfinch family to have flown, that perhaps it was only another instance of delicate marital attention, such as I have noticed in the case of robins and tits.
In February, 1893, a hen hawfinch was shown me. It had just been shot in the village, and in 1894 I heard of a nest in the gardens at Lymm Hall, rather more than two miles away.
My wife told me one morning in October, 1910, that she had seen on a tree near her window a thick-set bird with a big head and short tail and neck, whose colour she described as some shades of brown. Two or three little birds appeared to be mobbing it, and it kept pecking at them like a parrot. She only saw it for a minute or two, before it flew away round the corner of the house. It altogether sounds as though it might have been a hawfinch.
House-sparrows abound here, and are interesting and amusing to the unprejudiced looker-on who doesn't suffer from their depredations. There is no denying that sparrows are vulgar, and bold and pushing, or that they are tiresomely persevering in the mischief that they do. They are coarsely built and have no song, while their monotonous chirp is distracting, but they have that which for the race of life stands them in more stead than either beauty or musical talent; they have courage and intelligence, a wonderful power of adapting themselves to circumstances and a sound healthy constitution, with a digestion that an ostrich might envy.
The food-stand has shown me what sparrows are and what they can do. When I set it up I had no wish to feed sparrows, and could not bear to see them devouring all before them in the greedy, systematic way that they have. So I set my wits to work to see if I could not contrive something by which they might be baffled without depriving the tits of their food. It proved more than I could do to prevent any of the sparrows getting any of the food, but I was able to make it more difficult for them, so difficult that only a few could manage it. They differ very much individually: some are far bolder and more enterprising than others, but I have found that some sparrows can do almost anything that a tit can do in the way of acrobatic performances, though not, of course, with the same easy grace. I tried many devices. I had seen somewhere that if food were suspended from a pliable twig only tits would venture to attack it. It didn't take long to prove the fallacy of this idea. The swinging of the net made not the slightest difference to the sparrows; they alighted on it just as readily as if it had been lying on the ground. Then I tried hanging the net at one end of a stick and a movable weight at the other. The stick acted as a balance, and the net went down directly a bird settled on it. This instability frightened the sparrows for a long time, but in the end they got quite used to it. It was the same with many other contrivances that I tried, they answered their purpose for a time, it may be altogether as far as most went, but in every case sooner or later some sparrows learnt to overcome every difficulty, and it struck me that each successive year they seemed to do so more easily, as though they turned the experience of one year to good account in the next.
In 1899 I made an apparatus like a windmill, with four arms, and food in a kind of little box at the end of each. The arms, of course, went down directly a bird touched them. This for a long time was effectual, and I had begun to flatter myself that I had solved the problem, but during a hard frost some one or two sparrows overcame their fears and managed to get the fat, and when once they saw it might be done with safety many others learnt the trick. I then complicated the idea into a wheel, with eight arms, and food only at the extreme point of each. This answered so far that no sparrow seemed able to get at the fat from the revolving arm itself as they hung on to it (an easy feat for the tits), but they used to hover opposite the ends of the arms and pick out the food. (Robins did this also.) Independently of its effect in discouraging the sparrows, the wheel afforded much amusement by the antics it imposed upon the tits as they went round and up and down on the arms.
One plan I tried depended for its action on the difference of weight between a sparrow and a tit. It was the opposite of the arrangement by which sparrows are prevented from appropriating the food put out for pheasants, where the pheasant opens the corn-box by his weight on the perch outside. I tried so to arrange the balance that the heavier sparrow was cut off from the hole which contained the food, whilst for the tit it remained open. The practical drawback to this plan was the nicety of adjustment required, for though a sparrow is more than twice the weight of a tom-tit, the difference between the two weights is little more than a quarter of an ounce.
One of the most successful contrivances, after all, is one of the simplest. Take a tin canister (one that I used was three inches long by 2-1/2 in diameter), hang it open end downwards by a string brought through a hole in the other end, to this string fasten inside the tin a bit of wood about the thickness of a large pencil, and let it hang like the clapper in a bell, projecting a quarter of an inch below the bottom rim of the tin. Plaster all round the inside of the tin with fat, leaving the wooden tongue in the middle free for the birds to cling to. In this way both great-tits and tom-tits can feed themselves without difficulty, but only one sparrow in twenty can manage with much ado to hold on and to eat at the same time. (To see a sparrow with his less-practised feet clinging to the edge of the tin, back downwards, just like a tit and helping himself to its contents is a good example of the energetic enterprise and the adaptability of his nature.) Robins do sometimes hold on to the tin in the same way, but generally they get quite as much as they want by flying up and pecking at the fat. They seem able to aim very accurately, and when the tin is nearly empty can make sure of the smallest fragments. Sparrows also attack the food in the same way by flying up at it, but they seem to find it more awkward, owing, perhaps, to the small space between the sides of the tin and the wood in the middle, which barely gives room for their larger heads and clumsier beaks.
Another successful plan was to suspend the fat within a roll of inch-mesh wire netting. To begin with I put this on the food-stand, at some little distance from my window, and though at first only tits and robins would venture down within the roll of wire, after a time the sparrows followed suit, and, of course, there was nothing to prevent them getting as much as they liked but their own caution. I might have stopped them by covering the top with netting, but then the great-tits and robins would have been excluded as well as the sparrows, and even tom-tits could only get through the meshes with difficulty. However, I moved the roll quite close up to the glass of the window, leaving the top still uncovered (and the bottom closed) as before. Tom-tits came to it in its new position almost as readily as when on the food-stand. Great-tits came but were always rather uneasy about it, but not one sparrow ventured to clamber down inside the roll, although it was there for more than a year and we had some very hard frosts. They would continually try to get at the food from underneath and from the side, but could not make up their minds to go inside the roll itself, although it was quite open and they had learnt to go in without scruple when it was on the food-stand, before it was put close to the window. The most fearless of any birds with regard to this wire roll were two robins in the beginning of 1902; they were perpetually scrambling up and down inside the wire, and continued to do so until April, when the supply of food came to end.
The extreme caution of sparrows enables one to scare them away for a time by a fluttering ribbon or a bit of paper, but it is only for a time; when they see that tits treat such things with contempt and venture close to them with impunity they soon summon up courage to lay aside their suspicions.
I once put a wire rat-trap under the food-stand, so arranged that it went off when a string was pulled. At first, it was baited with corn, but while robins and tits went in and out without the least concern, not a sparrow would go near, and for a time the presence of the trap kept them away from the food-stand altogether. However, they could not resist the temptation of bread, and one or two were caught at last. But what was the use of catching them? I hadn't the heart to kill them in cold blood and used to let them go, and indeed I quite enjoyed myself the sense of joyous relief they must have felt as they flew off unharmed into the free air.
However much mischief sparrows may do, some good work must be placed to their credit. Through a great part of the year, even in February, I have seen them flying up after gnats, and it is a common thing in summer to see a sparrow in pursuit of a moth. Its efforts always seem ridiculously awkward and sometimes I fancy are ineffectual after all, but they must commonly succeed or they would not try so often and so persistently.
In the spring of 1900 the grass was covered for many days together with some kind of little black fly, and sparrows a dozen or so at a time with blackbirds, thrushes and chaffinches found a continual feast in them. I noticed again and again quite a big round ball of them collected and carried away by a thrush.
It has often been noticed that sparrows are more eager than most birds in hunting for aphides, and I have seen a sparrow make short work of a "daddy-long-legs." In July and August I have watched them catching flies on the grass, running after them much as a wagtail does, indeed once I remember seeing a sparrow and a wagtail on the lawn at the same time, each followed by a young bird whose hunger they were trying to satisfy with flies caught in similar fashion.
Impudence is a marked characteristic of a sparrow. I have seen a starling at work in his busy, methodical way, closely followed all over the lawn by a sparrow. There he was all the time, close at the starling's elbow and ready to pounce upon whatever dainty morsel a skill superior to his own might bring to light. The starling was plainly bored by his company, but the sparrow would take no hint, and maintained his position in spite even of pointed rebuffs from the other's beak. (In the dry summer of 1911 I noticed at different times both a throstle and a blackbird attended in the same way by a sparrow.)
At another time when a starling has arrived with food in its mouth, and not daring on account of my being there to take it into its nest, has begun, after the usual unwise custom of starlings, loudly to advertise the situation, I have seen two sparrows, attracted by the noise he made, take up positions one on either side and try to snatch the food away from him. I saw this happen twice on two successive days in June, 1901.
The dusting habit of sparrows must be counted among their many iniquities when they indulge in it, as they often do, in a bed of newly-sown seeds, but it was strange to see one dusting during the hard frost of 1895; one should have thought that they were so out of the way of dusting in winter that no sparrow would have taken advantage of the rare opportunity when a long dry frost made it possible.
One day in April, 1899, a sparrow that was sitting on the food-stand close by my window made quite a song of his chirping. There was a kind of modulation of notes, continuously uttered and accompanied by a regular "beating time" movement of his tail. On another occasion I have heard a sparrow sitting alone on the ridge of a roof, singing, one could only call it, quite a little song in subdued tones.
The spruce, handsome chaffinch (in Cheshire "pied finch") is with us all the year round, and his song here, as I suppose everywhere, is one of the most familiar of the pleasant voices of spring.
One or more chaffinches generally feed with the fowls (and sometimes they are quite extraordinarily tame, hens more so, perhaps, than cocks), but they do not often attempt to get food from the stand. Though they sometimes do, for instance in the winter of 1910-11, there was one that came regularly.
The gait of the chaffinch strikes one as peculiar, it is as a fact a hopping movement, but it gives the impression of a run.
I have frequently noticed something like rivalry or competition in singing between a chaffinch and another bird, such as a tree-pipit or a lesser whitethroat, or a willow-wren.
One night as I was going the round of the house the last thing, about 12 o'clock, I heard a great fluttering and found that a light had been left on a table close to an unshuttered window, and outside beating against the glass was a handsome cock chaffinch.
In February, 1911, a brambling was brought to me for identification. It had been shot at the other side of the village, one of a large flock. I have never seen one in the garden itself, but not far away I think I caught sight of a small flock in March, 1899.
Far more interesting than stuffed specimens in a museum (how seldom, even at South Kensington, do you see small birds well set up, even sufficiently well to recognize the bird when met with alive!); far more interesting is such an outdoor aviary as one finds near the Town Hall in Warrington, where the birds appear to want nothing to make their lives ideally happy. In this aviary bramblings seem quite at home, and may be seen in best condition of health and feather.
Lesser redpoles, which here they call "jitties," I have seen close to the garden, and on the other side of the village they are common. I have heard of one boy catching 50 in a season with birdlime; for these he got a few pence apiece in Warrington.
A lesser redpole was given me in 1900, and a very engaging little bird he was. Though supposed to be freshly caught he was tame when first I had him, and in a very short time seemed hardly to know fear.
We used to let him out of his cage every day for an hour or so at a time. He enjoyed this immensely, and we had great difficulty in shutting him up again. He seemed fond of his cage, and would be continually going into it, but directly we went near to shut the door he was out. I tried a long string, which we pulled from a distance as soon as he was in the cage. This answered for a time, but he got to be so knowing that when he saw the string fastened to the door he wouldn't go into the cage at all. We got the better of him in the end, however, by hanging a bit of card inside the doorway; when he pushed against this on the outside he could get by into the cage, but he couldn't open it from the inside. We only turned the card in when we wanted him to go back, leaving him free to go in and out as he liked till then. Oddly enough, he used to go in almost directly the card was in its place, and never attempted to get out again. He seemed to enjoy the exercise of flying very much, and used to go round and round the room again and again and again for the mere pleasure of it.
Though he would settle on the different things in the room and stay there for some length of time, there was never any need to clean up after him, but on the outside of his cage he was not so particular. It was a great amusement to him to sit and make faces at himself in a looking-glass.
He lived very happily with us for more than two years. In the end he died of some kind of wasting disease, but was bright and apparently happy to the last.
For some months before he died, if we let him out at meal-times, as we often did, he had a curious habit of going to the salt-cellars and helping himself to grains of salt; once he took as many as thirteen pinches in succession! We often wondered afterwards whether he took the salt because he was ill or whether it was the salt that made him ill.
I would gladly sacrifice many fruit buds for the sake of seeing bullfinches in the garden, but never yet have I had that pleasure. Other people in the village do not regard their visits in the same light, and it is only because I hear of their being shot that I know they come here.
A bullfinch that belonged to a cousin must I think have reached the highest degree of tameness possible in a bird. Tommy, as he was called, was taken from the nest before he could fly, and he not only lost all sense of fear but showed an extraordinary personal devotion to his mistress. He used to wake her in the morning with a kiss, and warble his little greeting. He would come directly she called him, and would fly after her from room to room. This devotion was at last the cause of his death. In May, 1901, he was taken to London to a strange house, and one day hearing his mistress's voice as she came in, he flew down the stairs to meet her, and somehow struck against the hall lamp with such force that he was taken up dead.
I find the following entry in my diary for November 9th, 1895:—"A small flight of birds passed along the trees in front of the window. Caught a momentary glance of one as it rested on the tree, and noticed shades of brown and pink and the peculiar bill. Could they have been crossbills?"
Yellow-hammers, or "goldfinches" as they are called here, are often to be seen in the fields near, but in the garden we are more familiar with the black-headed reed-bunting. We generally have one or two about the old bed of the river. I have watched the bird through a telescope on a July day, as he sat on an osier twig that was swaying in the wind, preening his feathers and uttering his short melody (?) betweenwhiles. He would begin as though he had really something to sing, then would come two halting notes, indicating doubt of his power to do much after all, which would immediately become a certainty, and his brief attempt would end in a fizzle. He would, however, be perfectly satisfied with the performance himself, and would go through it again and again almost as persistently as the yellow-hammer repeats his wearisome monotonous phrase. In the spring he has a still simpler song, if it can be called a song, consisting of two or three notes of one tone, something like the cheep of a chicken, sometimes repeated ad infinitum, sometimes followed by a short run of three or four notes more.
We have starlings with us all the year round, and I am glad of it. Here at any rate they do nothing but good, and they are, besides, handsome, and are interesting to watch, while their song, whether a chorus or a solo, is always cheerful. Cold and bad weather doesn't seem to affect their spirits. On Christmas morning, in 1897, although there was a hard frost, starlings were singing away merrily, one of them imitating a blackbird's note exactly.
At one time flocks of starlings used to come on autumn evenings to roost in the garden. I have watched one detachment after another arrive until the trees and evergreens were crowded with them. They did not come so much later on when the leaves had fallen, and now that the shrubbery has been thinned they do not come at all in any numbers. In spring I have heard 30 or more all singing together in this same shrubbery as late as April 2nd.
Starlings hunt for their food in a methodical, business-like way. They do not seem to have the peculiar gift by which thrushes hit on the exact spot where a worm is (I fancy they do not feed much on worms) but they go diligently over every square inch of ground in their search, probing the turf with their bills widely open, so widely that one can hardly see how they can close them on a grub when they find one.
Starlings afford another example of a strange perversion of instinct or want of common sense. If you happen to be standing anywhere near the place that one has chosen for his nest, and he arrives with his food in his mouth, instead of slipping quietly in whilst your eyes are turned away, he waits outside making as much racket as he can, and you are almost forced to notice him and cannot fail to see the whereabouts of his nest, plainly marked as it is sure to be by plentiful splashes of white.
It is quite a common thing in spring and summer to see starlings catching flies in the air, and I remember in 1906, on September 29th, the air was, one might say, full of starlings, floating about in every direction with expanded wings, and then shooting up or down or to one side when they came within reach of a fly. It was a warm, still day, and I fancy the flies they were catching were winged aphides.
For many years now as soon as the elder-berries are ripe numbers of starlings, chiefly young ones, arrive on the scene, and in a few days clear them off completely.
Jays are not common here, but we have occasionally watched one in the garden as he was looking for fallen acorns in the grass close to the house.
One may pretty safely count on seeing a magpie near Arley at any time of the year, and we do at long intervals see them in this garden and in the fields near, but they are very far from common.
I have heard of a magpie at a farm in the next village to this, many years ago indeed, who kept his eye on a turkey that was in the habit of laying eggs at a little distance from the house, and often managed to appropriate the newly-laid egg before the farm people could stop him.
Jackdaws are often about, generally in company with rooks, but I have never specially noticed them settling in the garden, as the rooks often do.
In Wales once I saw a jackdaw busily engaged exploring the back of a pony with its beak. The pony continued quietly grazing all the while, but I thought he seemed rather relieved when his visitor left.
In January, 1898, two crows appeared in the garden; I used to see them nearly every evening. A month later we saw a single crow, injured in one wing, go backwards and forwards over the whole length of the opposite bank. Up and down he went, regularly quartering the ground in his search for food. He did this for several days, and we felt quite sorry for him, he was so diligent and persevering, and it must have been so little that he could find within such comparatively narrow limits. We put food for him, which he soon found and seemed to appreciate. He drove away rooks who tried to share it with him, but as he carried away each bit to eat in private the rooks took advantage of his absence, and the supply did not last as long as it might have done.
The poor bird was uncommonly wary: he would spy one out hundreds of yards away and disappear in a wonderful manner, seeing that he could not fly. At last some Ship Canal workmen caught him. I got him from them and kept him for three months, but though he ate pretty well it did not seem to do him much good, and he never became in the least tame to the day of his death.
We have often hoped that rooks would build in the garden; they come sometimes to the higher trees as though they had thoughts of doing so, but they have not gone beyond that as yet. In some years when acorns are ripe many rooks come here to get them (in 1911, although acorns were extraordinarily abundant, I hardly saw a single rook). I have never seen them pick up the acorns on the ground, as the jays and wood-pigeons do, but they gather them fresh for themselves from the tree.
More than once I have seen a single rook pursuing a hawk, and, on the other hand, I have seen a rook put to flight by a missel-thrush.
Rather a strange story was told me of a farmer's daughter at Heatley, near here. She lived by herself not far from the railway station, and every day, summer and winter alike, she fed a number of rooks that habitually waited on her bounty. One winter's day, it appears, she threw down food for a few rooks that were in a tree behind her house. The next day they were there again, and again she fed them, and so it grew into a regular thing, and they came expecting to be fed like so many fowls every day of the year. My informant often watched the proceeding, and said that the birds seemed to know their benefactress quite well and not to be at all afraid of her, though they were as shy of strangers as any other rooks.
Skylarks are abundant in the neighbourhood, and often in the garden we hear one singing overhead. I have seen a lark singing his regular song on the ground, and have seen one perched on iron railings by the side of a road holding a largish brown moth in its bill, and at the same time uttering repeatedly two or three notes of its song.
Larks are very fond of dusting in roads. I remember being struck one hot day in June by the number of dusting larks I met with in a ten-mile ride. Without any exaggeration there must have been one every twenty yards on an average for the whole distance.
The wild shriek of swifts, as they dash and wheel through the air at their topmost speed, seems to express such intense delight in freedom and motion and power, that it imparts something of the same sense of exhilaration to the beholder, at least, I know it is so with me.
Swifts, or "long-wings," as they are equally well-named in Cheshire, usually find their food at some height in the air, but one day in the beginning of July (1899) I noticed a number of swifts, with a great many swallows and sand-martins, skimming the surface of a patch of clover which had been left standing in a field near the garden. I did not discover what it was, but the attraction must have been something unusual, for the number of birds passing and re-passing in the very small space was so extraordinary that it was really difficult to understand how they could avoid collision. All were concentrated in the one spot, and never seemed to go beyond it for more than a couple of yards.
In 1896 there were swifts about all August, and I saw a pair on October 19th. I was told by a friend who was at Brighton in June, 1899, that whenever the band played on the sea front four swifts would appear and fly round and round the bandstand. She never noticed them there, she said, when the band was not playing, although it was her favourite seat at all times of the day.
Nightjars are not uncommon on "mosses" in Lancashire, only a mile or so away, and in Cheshire on the Carrington side of Warburton, but they are less frequent just about here. One year, however (1902), a pair evidently had made their nest in the rough tussocky ground which at that time covered the bed of the old river. From the middle of June to the beginning of July we were treated every evening to the full programme of their entertainment, both vocal and acrobatic. Several times one heard little snatches of the "song," even in the middle of the day in fine, hot weather, but nine p.m., sometimes a little earlier, was the usual time for beginning. The whirring would go on for an hour at a time, with hardly any cessation, but often varying in tone and volume, now swelling out louder and then sinking again. We often saw the two birds playing about together in the air, one or other of them making what is described as a "whipthong" noise and smiting its wings together like a pigeon. Sometimes when they first settled again after a flight, instead of the loud whirring there would be every now and then a soft, liquid, bubbling sound.
A favourite resting-place was the bare bough of a Scotch fir, and here as it lay lengthways and perfectly still the bird looked so like part of the branch itself that I couldn't persuade a friend who was with me that it was a bird until he actually saw it fly away. After July 4th we heard no more of them, and for a day or two before that the whirring was much more interrupted, in shorter spells, and varied more in intensity and clearness than usual.
Before the next spring came round the Ship Canal had covered the river-bed with another layer of mud dredgings, and we have neither seen nor heard a nightjar in the garden since, but in June, 1910, I heard from the keeper that he had watched one flying round an old black-poplar just opposite the garden gate, flapping the ends of the boughs with his wings and catching the moths that were driven out.
One of the most delightful of country sounds is, I think, the laugh of the green woodpecker, and when I heard that a pair of woodpeckers were constantly to be seen (January and February, 1901) about some old poplars not far away, and that early one morning one was working at the rotten posts of a fence in the very next field, my hopes were raised that even yet that welcome sound might be heard from the garden. But the birds turned out to be greater-spotted woodpeckers and not green, and these do not express the joy of living so plainly. I have several times since seen one of these spotted woodpeckers in the garden. One day (in April, 1908) I watched the bird for a long time as he visited in succession each of the posts in a wire fence by the old river-bed.
Green woodpeckers are rare in this part of the country, but "lesser-spotted" are found in Dunham Park, and the keeper tells me he has seen them in Warburton Fox-cover.
In the low-lying meadows by the Bollin, half a mile away, kingfishers have always been found, haunting the little water-courses and ditches, but at one time we were able to see them even from the garden itself.
In the making of the Ship Canal a part of the old river just beyond us was left unfilled up, and formed a fair-sized pool. Kingfishers used to come to this, and as long as there was any water at all in the old river-bed I often stood outside this house and watched the blue streak of light as the bird, with his peculiar shrill cry, flew straight as an arrow past me. Even in August, 1899, when what remained of the river was nothing but seething mud, in which I am sure there could have been no living fish, I disturbed a kingfisher from an overhanging branch on the bank.
A friend in the village, a keen observer of birds, has often seen, he tells me, that when kingfishers fly from the meadows to the "pits" on higher ground they first rise straight up into the air and then dart off in a perfect bee-line to their destination. He also said that kingfishers invariably desert a nest that has been touched. He was repairing the embankment of the Bollin once when a kingfisher's nest was accidentally laid open, and although the nest itself was not injured, and the two young ones in it were nearly fledged and fought at his hand like little owls, when two days later he was at the place again he found them both dead, unable to find food for themselves and forsaken by their parents.
The coming of the cuckoo seems to be of more interest to people here than any event in natural history, and cuckoos are, I should say, more plentiful with us than in many places, and are nearly as often seen as heard.
I must have seen a dozen one day in May from the high road during a short drive of a few miles, and, generally speaking, in May not a day (I should not be far out if I said not an hour of the day) goes by without our knowing by sight as well as sound that there are cuckoos in the garden.
The widespread belief that cuckoos turn into hawks in winter is still seriously held in Cheshire to-day, even by farmers.
For three days in the end of July, 1905, I was able from my study window to watch a young cuckoo being fed by its foster-parent, a meadow-pipit. The cuckoo was sitting on a wire fence on the opposite bank. At first it sat in a floppy kind of way, with its wings hanging down on either side, as if to keep its balance, but the next day it seemed to have gained strength and sat up better. The little pipit (if it was always the same, and I never saw more than one at once) was not away for more than a minute or two, except on the third day, when it was pouring wet and food seemed harder to find. As soon as the cuckoo knew that its nurse was coming it began opening its mouth and quivering its wings, while the poor little dupe that brought the food would alight a short distance off and run along the wire to its side, then, looking ridiculously small for the job, it would manage to pop something into its mouth, not all in one go, but in two or three. It was curious to notice that every time after being fed the ungrateful cuckoo gave spiteful pecks at the poor deluded little slave who was working so hard to supply its wants.
One day in May (1908) a cuckoo alighted on a tree close to the house, attended by two small birds. He seemed rather uneasy in their company, and kept looking suspiciously at them; they, I fancy, were trying to make up their minds to attack him, but they let "I dare not" wait so long upon "I would" that he went off unmolested.
Barn owls are comparatively common. Farmers are learning to understand better their great usefulness, and at least to leave them alone. Some, indeed, do more than this, and I know of two cases where the pigeon cote in the hay-loft has been given up to them. Through the back door of one of these cotes I have been able to see at my ease the funny little round-faced hissing young ones, and I was quite surprised to find how very long it is before the fully-fledged birds turn out of the nest. My friend at Heatley was one of those who entertained the owls, and he told me that if an old bird accidentally dropped a mouse as he made his way into the loft, he never by any chance attempted to recover it. He said he used on winter evenings to see the owls fly along the eaves of the neighbouring houses and inside the roof of a hayshed close by, beating with their wings to drive out the sparrows that were roosting there, and he found the remains of a great many sparrows in their casts.
A barn-owl appeared in the garden one day in May, 1899. It did all it could to hide itself in the bushes and thick Scotch firs, but in spite of its efforts the birds in the neighbourhood, led on apparently by the blackbirds, found it out again and again, and kept up a ceaseless noise and commotion as long as it was here. (I noticed that the fowls, both cocks and hens, joined in the general clamour.) In December, however, I have seen an owl fly into one of the out-houses in the middle of the day, and even sit calmly in full view on a leafless tree without attracting the least notice from any bird.
The keeper tells me that brown, long-eared, and short-eared owls are all to be found in Warburton at times, brown owls nesting here regularly.
Sparrow hawks come to us occasionally, but not so often as kestrels. The difference in the behaviour of small birds with regard to these two hawks is remarkable, and plainly shows that they have, as a rule, little to fear from kestrels. One November day, for instance, a sparrow hawk appeared in a tree just opposite my window, causing the greatest commotion and consternation among sparrows and all other birds. A week later a kestrel came to the same place at the same time of the day and stayed about for a considerable time, but none of the small birds took the least notice of him.
My friend at Heatley, who used to have the owls as his tenants, once (in 1897) shot a sparrow hawk near his house that had a screaming blackbird in his talons, and was tearing off from its back strips of feathers and flesh together without apparently having tried to kill it first. He told me that twice he had seen a lark escape from a sparrow hawk. In both instances the lark's idea seemed to be to rise higher than the hawk, and the two kept going up together. The hawk made repeated stoops at his quarry, but each time he missed, the lark striking now to the right and now to the left. The contest ended in both cases by the lark dashing down to cover from a great height; one time it found refuge among the shrubs in a garden, and on the second occasion it came down faster than he could describe with its wings closed against its sides, and just slanting over the tops of some fruit trees opposite, dashed straight into the kitchen. To do this it had to pass through the sliding door of the back-kitchen, which was not more than two feet open, and then through the open door of the kitchen. Strange to say, it was able to check its speed sufficiently to alight uninjured on the floor, though utterly exhausted and helpless. My friend picked it up, and having held it for some minutes in his hand, let it fly away seeming none the worse for its perilous adventure. The hawk, he said, sailed calmly once or twice round the house before he took himself off.
The following is part of a letter I received in November, 1894:—"A sparrow hawk took up his nightly abode on the transome of the top light of a window in Arley Chapel in the autumn of 1890, and remained constant to that roosting place until, at all events, May, 1892, when we left Arley. How long it stayed there after we left I cannot say, but I was told last winter that it had disappeared. The hawk was always solitary; I never saw it with a companion. The roost was always exactly on the same stone."
One has heard stories of other birds living the same kind of lonely existence, but I never saw a very satisfactory explanation as to how it is that they come to do so. The pairing instinct is strong in birds, and it must be a powerful motive that makes them disregard it. We are told that if a bird of prey loses its mate it does not take it long to find another. May we suppose that solitary birds like this at Arley are waiting in readiness for such an emergency? Or is such a bird simply one that, being old and cantankerous, is bored by female society, or feels himself unequal to the cares of a family?
All birds seem to give a sparrow hawk a wide berth, but one often sees a kestrel pursued, most frequently perhaps by a rook, but sometimes by a peewit or a gull. In October, 1908, I saw from the garden a kestrel persecuted by two rooks. He kept dodging their attacks, but didn't seem to mind them much and never turned on them. Again, at the end of October, 1906, I was watching a kestrel as it hovered over a field close by, when I saw it suddenly and violently assaulted by a missel-thrush. It gave way for some space, but when in a minute or two the thrush flew off, it returned to its first position and continued hovering just as if never interrupted.