pupæ especially. It is very courageous in defence of its young and will hiss like a snake if an enemy or intruder approaches its nest.
Country children in our Home Counties listen eagerly for the call of the Cuckoo’s mate, whom Eliza Cook calls “the merry pee bird.” They know then that Spring is with us, and out-door pleasures are on the way. It is only the size of a lark, and it is difficult to observe the bird well either on its nest or during its short undulating flight.
The Wryneck is seven inches in length. It has fine, loose plumage, which recalls that of the Owl or the Night-jar. The throat is clay-colour with fine dark wavy cross lines; tail a beautiful grey with delicate black speckles, and six broad pointed stripes across it; the under side is covered with brownish-white and black spots, and delicately speckled: from the nape, down the back, about the shoulders, are large black spots. The flight-feathers have rust-red cross stripes; it has two toes towards the front and two towards the back; the legs are short. It makes its nest in any cavity it can find, and in it lays, on soft chaff, its seven to twelve white eggs. The Wryneck, like the Woodpecker, has a long wormlike tongue which can be extended.
The Cuckoo is a most useful bird, as regards his food, which consists for the most part of very mischievous insects and caterpillars of all kinds; it is the more so as this bird is insatiable.
An individual Cuckoo probably always lays its eggs in the same neighbourhood, and always in the nest of the same kind of bird, and usually the same kind in which it was itself brought up. The young Cuckoo soon obtains the upper hand in the nest, on account of its rapid growth, and throws out its weaker foster-brothers and sisters. It always calls its own name—though it sounds more like “ha-hu”; sometimes it utters sounds which are like laughter. There is a popular superstition that the Cuckoo foretells to those who ask it, how many years they will live—and to young maidens, how many years they must wait for a husband.
Like the Swallow it brings the announcement of spring, and our Hungarian children have a song:—
The Cuckoo detracts from its usefulness, however, by its other actions. It greatly damages the nests of the small useful birds, in which it places its eggs, and consequently its young ones. The female Cuckoo selects a district, finds out all the nests of Wren, Robin, White-throat, Wagtail, or some other, and thereupon begins to place her egg in this. When she finds that she cannot get into a nest of a bird which builds in a hole, she lays her egg on the ground, then takes it up in her bill and drops it into the nest.
In spring and summer the Cuckoo’s note sounds all through Great Britain. Its ways will always have a fascination both for the old and the young. Many will be surprised to hear that scientists have now verified the placing of its eggs in the nests of as many as 145 species; in different countries, that is, including the nests of the Isabelline and other Chats in Africa and China, and the Red-headed Bunting on the steppes of Turkestan. In Lapland the Grey-headed Wagtail and the Red-spotted Bluethroat are the foster-parents; in Andalusia the Great-spotted Cuckoo lays oftenest in the nest of the Spanish Magpie.[2] The old poet, Quarles, must have seen the bird with an egg in its beak when he wrote “The idle Cuckoo having made a feast of Sparrow’s eggs, Lays down her own i’ the nest.”
A German authority, Dr. Rey, made a collection of over seven hundred Cuckoo’s eggs; and he states that the proportion of those which resemble in colouring those of the foster-parents is only about thirty per cent. Yet out of sixty-seven which he took from a Redstart’s nest fifty-seven were blue. Another collector again states that only one blue Cuckoo’s egg had passed through his hands. Lately a man told me of having found two Cuckoo’s eggs in one small nest, an unusual occurrence.
The Cuckoo is a very slender, long-tailed bird, 12 inches in length. In the male bird the mantle is ashen-grey, the tail has cross stripes, the under-parts are whitish with cross-running wavy lines. The female and young ones, with their reddish-brown dark cross bands, remind us of the Hawk. From this arises the popular superstition that the Cuckoo changes into a hawk in late autumn. The legs are yellow; eyes fiery red edged with yellow, beak dark, reddish at the corners. It never builds a nest. In its system of transplanting it shows itself an arrant knave, for it places its eggs in the nests of other birds, whose eggs, as a rule are totally different in size, colour and form. The eggs of one Cuckoo so placed may reach the number of 20 to 22, but as a rule are about 11 to 12.
With regard to the Cuckoo’s usual habit of leaving us in the autumn, a belated young bird may now and again spend the winter here. One frequented my sister’s tennis ground till the end of November, when the cat caught and killed it; and a gentleman of my acquaintance, Mr. Robinson of Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire, saw one on his farm early in February of 1908.
The Hoopoe is from base of bill 10 inches long. It is a fair bird with beautiful variegated plumage. Head, upper back, and breast pale rust-red; mantle, shining black, with white ornamentation; tail also black, with a crescent-shaped white band curving inwards towards the rump. The head is adorned with a bunch of feathers which the bird can erect or depress at pleasure. The feathers of this are light coloured, with black tips, but the tips of the longest feathers are black and white. Beak, long and slightly curved, thin, and adapted for picking. It lays four to seven eggs, greenish olive, or clay colour, but always of uniform colour, which it places on the mould in the holes of trees. The Hoopoe is the only bird that fouls its nest, and brings up its young in dirt and filth. On this account both mother and young have an evil odour, as some of the bird’s names indicate.
This national Hungarian bird is a migrant, and dwells chiefly on the borders of woods in the low bushes, and in the neighbourhood of pastures, where it is never weary of examining the droppings of the cows, from which it obtains beetles and maggots. It also catches gnats on the wing, and the leaping grasshoppers. It is a noisy bird, and its cry “Hup up”—from which its name is derived—is heard sounding vigorously from the branches. It is one of our most useful, and most brilliantly coloured birds, and should be protected.
For over two hundred years the Hoopoe has been recorded as a visitor to Great Britain, a more or less frequent one. Some years ago the late Mr. Howard Saunders told us that the head-keeper at Ashburnham Park, in Sussex, destroyed seven in one week, and that many a one has been slain in Kent, at the point where they alight after crossing the Channel. A few have, in spite of persecution contrived to breed in our country—in southern counties chiefly. Sometimes numbers come to England in the autumn, and it is generally an annual visitor in small numbers to Ireland. As it is a useful bird all should try to procure protection for it.
In spite of its comparatively small size this is a bold bird, and a true “Watchman”; he keeps a sharp lookout from the top branches of a dead tree, or a post, and will not suffer any other bird, even if ten times his size, to perch anywhere in his vicinity. Buzzards, Ravens, Crows, Magpies, he pounces on, something in the manner of a Falcon, and tries to push them off. He generally succeeds in routing the intruder, for he is indefatigable in attack. His food includes any living creature that he can slaughter.
He picks up a fat grasshopper, hovers over and darts on a mouse, just as a hawk does. These acts are beneficial; but they are not to be compared with the amount of harm he does, as a cut-throat and robber among the useful small birds. He disturbs the nests of the little singing birds which build on the ground, ransacks bushes and treetops, and slays mercilessly. His methods are those of the highwayman. He will sit on a stake on the top of a hayrick and watch, keeping perfectly still, only his eyes sweeping around. When his victim comes within range of his vision on earth, or tree, he instantly falls upon it. His close relation to the birds of prey, is indicated by his cry “Tett, tett.” His call is a strong, rough sound, like, “Sheck, sheck,” or a fainter “Truii.” This bird remains in Hungary through the winter, but is not very common. Where he does take up his abode, he does great harm by slaughtering the useful birds.
This Shrike is one of the regular visitors from the Continent, coming to Great Britain in autumn and winter. In England it has even been seen during the summer, but it has not bred with us. Lizards, mice, shrews, frogs, and insects, especially beetles and grasshoppers, it feeds on, as well as small birds.
The Great Grey Shrike is 9·5 inches in length. The back is light ashen-grey; underparts dingey white, brow whitish; from the base of the bill a broad black band passes over the eye to near the ear. Bill, legs, wings and tail black: the wings, however, have a white patch, and also the feathers on both sides of the tail show a white border. On the underparts of the female bird, faint stripes of a darker shade are discernible. The bill is indented at the point and has a hook. The bird builds its nest in trees and lays five or six eggs, occasionally seven, greenish-white speckled with grey.
The habits of this Shrike are, on the whole, those of the larger species, with this difference, that the Lesser Shrike, does not rob nests, but destroys insects, and therefore does good. It also, is a “Watchman.” It sits on a high point and flings its glances round about. Suddenly it darts down, looks about, finds its prey, and flies back to its former perch. When it is keeping watch over a place where the ground is covered with thick growth, it hovers at about half the height of a man, sometimes until it can see something that will serve as prey. If it finds nothing, it will cease to hover, and flies back to its post. Near the highroad it will flit onward from tree to tree, generally slightly in advance of a vehicle, till at last, at some point or other, it turns away over the fields and with a peculiar undulating flight returns to the spot where it started.
The Lesser Shrike is a migrant, and departs for warmer places at the beginning of autumn, returning to its nesting place in this country in the spring. Its cry sounds like “Keejay.” It is by nature quarrelsome, but it embellishes and enlivens the neighbourhood. Inthe warmer parts of Europe, it is the most common of all the Shrikes.
. . . . . . . . . . .
This species only wanders occasionally to England, a mere straggler, on migratory flight. If it be seen it must be protected, as a useful species, from “the man the gun” who shoots to sell or to enrich his own private collection.
The Lesser Shrike is smaller than the Great Shrike, but it is quite as beautiful and has the same deportment. Besides its smaller size, it is distinguished from its congener, by its black brow, the colour of which merges into that of the broad black stripe. The breast is a beautiful white, flushed with rose-colour. The white patch on the black wings is quite small. Otherwise the colouring is the same as that of the Great Shrike. Its nest is built in poplar trees bordering the highroad—sometimes in other trees. It employs sweet-scented plants in building the nest. It lays five or six pale green eggs, which have a speckled ring round the thicker end.
This Shrike specially likes bushes at the side of a road, or the edge of a wood, and more particularly affects the whitethorn, or sloe bushes; but it sometimes ventures into gardens. It kills more than it can eat, so it impales the superfluous provender on thorns, so as to be ready when the bird feels hungry again, or when the weather is not favourable for hunting. So crickets, grasshoppers, cock-chafers, and, alas! also young birds, are sometimes found sticking on thorns. As this bird keeps to its own district, it robs the nests of the small birds in a scandalous way, including that of the White-throat.
Care, therefore, should be taken to keep this ogre at a respectful distance from the gardens; he does less harm in the open fields, as he there employs his energies on the mice.
It is a migrant, and departs at the beginning of autumn, returning not earlier than near the end of April. Wherever it is, its “Geck, geck, geck,” is frequently heard. Sometimes also “Treng, treng,” reminding us of the Sparrow. It imitates the song of other birds in a remarkable way, even that of the Nightingale, often in this way misleading both man and birds.
The Red-backed Shrike comes to Great Britain in May. It is the commonest of our own three species; but is becoming rarer each year in Lancashire and Yorkshire, being more often met with in the wooded parts of the Southern counties and in Wales. A handsome fellow, with his grey head, mantle of
chestnut-brown, and underparts a pale rosy buff colour, he has not the look of the cruel bird he really is; his song is fairly sweet, and I have heard of one which was so good a mimic that it could even bark like a dog. This particular one had been brought up in an aviary, I believe. All this species are, however, very imitative in their notes. In some parts of Germany, they are looked on as a great scourge of small birds, yet one or two of our English naturalists have tried to do justice to the pretty fellow. They have seen only beetles, wasps and other not-to-be-regretted small deer impaled on the thorns of his larder. In point of fact, small birds, especially our pleasant little Tits, disappear under his notice; White-throats also occasionally, as well as bigger fledglings.
The German naturalist Lenz writes that he made some experiments in regard to Shrikes. In one garden he destroyed every Butcher-bird’s nest that he could find, and shot the birds; and there he had plenty of fruit, because the small birds stayed and destroyed the grubs and insects. In another, a larger garden, he allowed just one Shrike to breed. Wasps and other creatures destroyed all the fruit near the part where this Shrike’s nest was. In a third garden Lenz allowed Shrikes to nest freely, with the result that all the insect-eating birds forsook the place, or else were destroyed by the Butcher-birds, and there was no fruit. Writing of the Red-backed Shrike, one of our leading authorities in bird matters notes that in its larder he has seen the bodies of large moths, dragon-flies, mice, and sometimes a small bird from which the head has been wrenched, and many a cockchafer; and Canon Tristam considers that the food of the various species of Shrikes is almost entirely cockchafers, where they are to be had. The Rev. T. Wood again ranks them with the Owls for usefulness. A French naturalist also says they have every right to be placed on the list of useful insectivorous birds. It would seem to depend much on the nature of the district whether this bird is to be welcomed or otherwise.
The Red-backed Shrike is 7 inches long. Its whole shape and colouring—still more its habits—are those of a true Shrike. Crown and neck a beautiful grey; mantle reddish-brown; the folded wings show no white patch. Underparts pale rose colour, throat white; across the eyes and towards the ears, is the broad black band. The middle feathers of the tail reddish-brown, the outside feathers white near the root. The breast of the female bird is pale, crossed by brown wavy lines. The upper mandible is serrated and has a slight hook. The nest is usually placed in bushes; it contains five to seven eggs nearly white, with a ring of small darker speckles, sometimes at the larger and sometimes at the smaller end.
This simple, modest, agreeable bird is valued and loved by us, because it comes in such a friendly way near our houses and ourselves. It nests in orchards, and more especially in gardens where there are bushes, and charms us in the early spring with its sweet trilling song, “Lee-lee-lee-lee-lee.” The little song is quite simple, being just the repetition from six to eight times of the syllable “Leeleelee.” Its call-note is “tack-tack-tack.” It keeps the feathers of its head erected whilst singing. Its food consists of all kinds of harmful insects for which it hunts without rest, and is therefore no less useful than the Titmouse. It feeds also on various berries, but without doing any harm. The hen shows great self-sacrifice in rearing her brood, amongst which is often found a stranger—the Cuckoo.
Its nest should be protected from the house Cat. Whoever protects it secures its services for himself. The Whitethroat is migratory, and so exposed to many dangers.
Mr. Herman gives us only the Lesser Whitethroat. With us what we call the Whitethroat proper is much
more common (Sylvia cinérea). Both species arrive in Great Britain at the same time, that is about the second week in April, to stay until the beginning of September. With us they nest in brambles and low hedgerows, and because of the fondness of nettle beds, schoolboys know it mostly as the “Nettle-creeper.” The male is a courageous little bird; he will often follow one along the side of his favourite hedgerow, flitting from branch to branch with the feathers on head and throat bluffed out and agitating his tail. We hear his song by night as well as by day.
The Lesser Whitethroat is 5·25 inches long. The crown is ashen-grey; cheeks darker, mantle grey-brown; back and breast white, merging into yellowish-red at the sides. The side feathers of the tail are wedge-shaped, the feathers near it having small indistinct spots. Beak small, awl-shaped; legs strong and bluish. The nest is generally found in whitethorn hedges and sloe-bushes, at about two and a half feet from the ground; in gardens the nest is placed higher. It is composed of fine grass and root fibre, interwoven and compacted with spider’s web, and lined with pig’s bristles and horse-hair. The bird lays five or six beautifully formed eggs, which are white or bluish with delicate speckles, which are thicker at the larger end of the egg, round which they form a ring.
The Blackcap prefers the underwood, particularly where higher trees stand solitary; it also nests in gardens, even in the public gardens of large towns, where it feeds on all kinds of insects, and so it serves wood and garden equally well. It leads a happy family life, and during its courting days the little wooer is full of joyous song. The song is simple, and does not approach that of the Nightingale in our opinion, although others say it does; it certainly cannot express so many phases of feeling, but it is as lovely and joyous as that of a merry child. It is heard first from one side of the bush, and then from the other, and it carries delight into the heart of the listener. Hoffman represents the song of the Blackcap by the syllables “Rutia, ruetidi-rutia, tuedili, tuedia.” Its mating call is “Take, take, take,” the warning cry “Rarr.” Towards autumn this bird eats all kinds of berries from the bushes—elderberries, blackberries, and others; in the garden it picks currants, without, however, doing any serious mischief, or being able to do so, for its principal food is composed of insects.
The bird-catchers ensnare it on account of its charming song. They cover its cage with greenery, so that it may imagine itself in the underwood, and thus the poor thing lives and learns the songs of other captive birds.
The Blackcap loves our old English hedgerows, about which it can find all its necessary insect food and also good cover. It is not a very commonly distributed bird with us; like the Nightingale, it is local in its habitat. The young fuss about after their parents for food supplies, after they have left the nest, more than most young birds do. Often the Blackcap builds in a privet hedge, or some bush near to garden or orchard, for the sake of the fruit of which it certainly avails itself a little. Do not grudge it, the song will make up for a slight loss of fruit, which is the more plentiful for the little bird’s making away with insect pests that infest the same precincts.
The Blackcap’s mantle is olive-grey, underparts nearly white; the colouring of the head forms a black cap, which extends over the eyes: hence its distinguished name. The cap is brown on the female bird and its young. Tail and wings dark-brown; beak thin, awl-shaped; legs strong; very bright dark-brown eyes. The nest is always found in thick bushes, near the ground, and it is furnished with grass and rootlets, and also the webs of insects, sometimes hair, but very little feather. It contains five or six eggs, which vary in colour, being sometimes brownish, sometimes nearly white or olive-grey, speckled or otherwise marked with a reddish tint.
The Nightingale leads a quiet domestic life among the thickets. It has much occupation on the ground, whence it derives its livelihood, its food consisting entirely of grubs and insects. In the pairing season, and at the time when the hen is sitting, the male bird perches on a twig near the nest and sings his song—now mournful, now stirring, now tender; the finest song produced from any bird’s throat! Enthusiastic bird-fanciers have put words to the Nightingale’s song and turned it into verse. It begins thus:—
We have a native congener, the Meadow Nightingale, which is larger than the bird described above, and has a darker and fuller breast. The Hungarian Nightingale of the bird dealers begins its song thus:—
Bird-catchers have been very destructive to this noble, useful bird on the Continent.
The Nightingale comes to Great Britain in the middle of April. In August the young birds take their departure, but the old birds stay until September in order to finish moulting before taking flight. It has been supposed that the migration is made singly, not in flocks like that of other small birds; but a naturalist has recorded having once seen great numbers of Nightingales resting
under the bathing machines along the whole length of the shore at Brighton.
This fine singer is very local in its appearance. In the West of England it is rarer than elsewhere, and beyond Devonshire it is said to be quite unknown. In the Midlands it is scarce, and in the Northern counties it is entirely absent excepting in Yorkshire, where it is getting more common. They seem to be capricious in their comings and goings from given localities; no doubt their presence depends on the season’s scarcity or abundance of the food they prefer. The nestlings live on spiders, ants and small green caterpillars in June, and they afterwards frequent fields planted with peas and beans. The adult birds feed on worms, insects and wild fruits, especially the berries of the elder.
The Nightingale is as plain in plumage as it is marvellous in song. The mantle is russet-brown, shading off into reddish-chestnut near the tail, which is rust-colour, underparts whitish. It is scarcely as large as a Sparrow, and is much more delicately formed. Beak thin and pointed, legs slender. The shining, dark-brown eye has a brilliant glow. Its nest is placed among the bushes of a thicket, always near the ground. The outer covering is of dry leaves, then come blades of grass and fine rootlets, sometimes having hair interwoven with them. It does not stand out from the surrounding objects, and requires a sharp eye to discover it. The clutch consists of five or six olive-green eggs, with darker reddish-brown veining and speckles.
This pretty and very useful bird quickly attracts notice in our gardens by its lively disposition. When it flies the tail spreads out, and then, when the bird settles again on any post or ledge the tail moves in a quick, tremulous way that is most amusing.
It usually perceives the creeping and flying beetles on the grass borders from a higher point above them; the former it picks up, the latter it swallows on the wing, twisting and turning about as circumstances require. It lives on all kinds of grubs and insects, and hence its great use in wood and garden. In autumn it takes the berries from the bushes, but without doing any mischief. Its mating call sounds like “Fid-fid-fid-tik-tik-tik,” and also “Weet, weet, tak-tak,” and ends with a smacking sound. In some places in Hungary the bee-keepers are great enemies of this charming little bird, believing that it steals their honey. This is not true, however, for it only catches the drones, which have no sting, takes the rejected, spoiled larvæ, and the destructive wax-mite. From its usefulness it is worthy of all protection, and it is a joy for heart and mind.
To us also in Great Britain where this species is generally distributed it is a joy, and in orchards its presence is most welcome. The red about the tail shows brightly as the bird darts from branch to branch. I have watched it myself where a nesting box has been put up for its use in an apple tree, until the little pair became quite used to my presence and to watch their pretty, affectionate ways was delightful. In speaking of nesting boxes, one must give a warning in connection with those smaller birds who like to nest in holes in walls and trees. I have seen them with lids at the top for the proprietor to open, which, through stress of weather and weak rusty hinges, soon came to grief. I regret to say this happened in the case of the pair I knew best. The lid was defective, and one night or morning early soon after the nestlings were hatched out, a Shrike or a Crow routed them out, to my great sorrow.
The Redstart is an elegant gay-coloured bird of slender shape, in other respects like the Robin. Throat, lores, brow and bill-base are a fine black. The upper part of the brow is pure white, passing into the bluish-grey of the crown. Back of the head and mantle also of the same beautiful bluish-grey; breast, rump, and tail a brilliant chestnut-red, but the middle feathers of the tail grey. Beak and legs delicate, but strong. The female bird and the young are less brightly coloured. The nest is found in cracks, holes, convenient corners, such as are under the roof of summer houses. It is rather carelessly put together, but well-formed, and is lined with hair and feathers. The bird lays five or six eggs, of a fine rare blue-green colour.
The Black Redstart which was formerly rare with us, is now a well-known visitor to many parts of our coasts in the autumn and winter, especially to Cornwall and Devon. It does not as yet breed with us, however. It visits Ireland also, particularly on the east and south coasts. It is called the House Redstart, and its congener the Garden Redstart on the Continent; the one under notice frequents the roofs of buildings, and it places its nest in châlets, holes in walls, sheds, etc. It is a useful little bird.
Frequenting the woods, the Tree Pipit seeks only the clearings, especially the wild parts, where these and copsewood alternate, and the ground is mossy. At the time of migratory flight it likes to rest on vegetable fields and cornfields. It will rest willingly on trees, but prefers the ground. Very small seeds it will eat, but all kinds of grubs and caterpillars and insects it prefers. The Tree Pipit has a pleasant note, “Zeä, zeä, zeä”—the mating call is more like “Seele, seele, seele.” It is absolutely useful in its mode of living.
It nests in Hungary more numerously than any other of the Pipits, for it has relatives which only visit our neighbourhood. At the time of migration, they arrive, rest themselves, and go off again.
In addition to the Pipit here described there is the Water Pipit, which breeds here. It seeks the mountain districts in summer, but takes refuge in the valley in winter; Richard’s Pipit, rather larger than these others, and with longer legs and a very long hind claw. The Meadow Pipit only passes through our land, like the Tawny Pipit; both of the latter nest in the far North, and they go far South in the winter.
The Tree Pipit comes to the South of Great Britain early in April, and it is spread pretty considerably throughout the country, excepting in Cornwall and Wales. As yet it is not, I believe, in Ireland. The song of this bird is rather like that of a Canary. It begins on the highest branch of a tree generally, after
which the bird hovers a little, then descends, singing still, to the perch he started from.
The Meadow Pipit is the best known member of his family with us. Ground-lark, Titlark, Ling-bird, Moss-cheeper are some of its local names. It seems able to make itself at home anywhere in summer, but in winter it seeks the fields in sheltered places, near the coast by preference. Its food consists of insects, worms, molluscs and small snails, with seeds in winter. The little bird works its creeping way up the grass or heather, taking now and again quick little runs. The flight is wavering and jerky. The Titlark has a very strong smell about it, dogs “point” it frequently.
In size the Tree Pipit most resembles the Wagtail, but it has a shorter tail. Its general colour is more like the Lark, but it is less speckled. The mantle is olive-green, the breast yellowish. The points of the folded tail are formed by the three first flight feathers; the fourth is much shorter. The nail of the back toe is long like a spur, but not so long as the toe. The beak is delicate and slightly awl-shaped. It is a nice modest little bird; its flight dips and rises again continually. It builds its nest cleverly with soft materials in the shape of a saucer, and places it on the ground on a clod of earth, under the shelter of a heap of stones, or on a grass ridge. Five eggs are laid which are very varied, a dull blue, sometimes brownish, sometimes white, with dark spots.
Wagtails are all migrants and arrive in Hungary in great numbers.
This is a lively, elegant little bird, that walks and runs well, is very active, and always wagging its tail as it goes. It hops daintily from stone to stone in the shallow water, picking up insects busily, and snapping at the flies and gnats; and over the tall grasses and banks of the water, it dashes into the air, turning and twisting in the pursuit of insects. When there is pasture land near the water, it shows itself to be a good friend to the cattle, by destroying the flies and gnats and the tiny midges of the dragonfly kind, which would otherwise torment them. Its congeners in Hungary are the Yellow Wagtail, whose underpart is bright yellow, and mantle olive-green, which wags its tail less, and confines itself to cattle pastures; the Mountain Wagtail, the upper part of which is ashen-grey, and the under side brimstone yellow. Its call is a clear “Zeewit-zuyit-beuees, or zeueess,” sometimes it sounds like “Kwee-kwee, kweereeree-kweeree.”
The Wagtail is 7·5 inches in length, and has a long tail. It is a very charming bird. Its plumage is of three colours—black, white, and ashen-grey. Crown, neck, and throat black; brow, cheeks, and underparts white; mantle grey; tail and wings black, the feathers of the latter being edged with white; the two outer feathers on both sides of the tail are mostly white. Rump dark-grey, underneath the tail white; bill awl-shaped, and black, as are also the slender legs. It builds its nest on the edge of the water in all sorts of places: in holes, between stones, in cracks in the earth, among roots or in wood-stacks. It lays sometimes as many as eight, but usually five white eggs, finely speckled with dark colour, the speckling thicker at the larger end, in a ring round the egg.
This very handsome little bird, which is smaller than the White Wagtail, and does not wag its tail so much, inhabits the low Hungarian plain, and the pastureland generally of the open country, especially moist moorlands, and the banks of marshes, where it keeps close to the grazing animals, which are mostly swine and buffaloes. When swine trample down the bank of the ponds the bird approaches, and picks up the water insects and larvæ which have been exposed in the disturbed ground, or if the buffaloes trample the earth on the edge of the marsh the Wagtail is sure to be close on their heels to secure its share of food. It builds its nest in the grasses of the meadow or at the roots of the bushes in the hedge. It usually lays five eggs, which have light flecks on a dingy white ground.
A bird I always looked for eagerly in the days of my youth, on our Staffordshire moorlands was the Yellow Wagtail with its lovely tints. It would come tripping blithely along a certain road on its way from one rough fallow field to another, a most dainty, and I fancied then, even foreign-looking little creature. It has a prettier song than its relatives, the Grey and the Pied Wagtails, and is altogether a daintier looking bird. Nor is it so common, being very local in its distribution. Leaving us in September, little parties of the Yellow Wagtails are formed then, and some districts only make their acquaintance with these birds when on their migratory flight. Lately I heard of a company of about seventy Wagtails resting for the night in Kew Gardens grounds, where they had not been noted before. They frequent the meadows beside the Brent by Perivale, Ealing, where small, thin-shelled molluscs by the stream, and insects stirred into activity by the heavy feet of the grazing cattle, furnish them with food. I watched one day a pretty sight,—a nimble Wagtail in close attendance on an old sheep. The way it darted nimbly about this animal’s face, picking off the tiny flies as the creature fed was wonderful. Sometimes you may chance to see one picking the torturing little insects out of an old horse’s ears as it lies resting on the sward.
The yellow species is called Motacilla raii, but the Abbé Vincelot, who wrote half a century ago, on the birds of Maine-et-Loire, treating specially of their names as descriptive of their manners, call it Motacilla boarula, and he said he thought the latter designation came from Boaria, an old name for Bavaria, used after the Boïens, driven by the Marcomans from Bohemia, settled there. This name Boïens seems to have been given to the tribes who reared and tended cattle. There were Boïens of Gaul, of Italy, and of Germany. In Poitou an ox is still called boe and the grazier boier. By the ancient Romans the beef market was called the forum boarium. And so the name of boarule given to the Yellow Wagtail may be supposed to indicate this habit of following up the cattle in quest of his insect food. Bergeronette, the common French name of this charming and useful species, is equally descriptive of the bird as an ally of the shepherd.
The Pied Wagtail, Motacilla lugubris, is our common and well distributed species. The Grey Wagtail, M. Melanópe, a beautiful bird with its longer tail and yellow tints, frequents our hilly districts and mountain streams; but, the Blue-headed species is only an irregular visitor to our Islands, on migration. The food and habits of this family are alike, and they are all most useful to the grazier and farmers generally.