This Reed Warbler lives exclusively in reed beds, and, as it is fairly common, inhabits a large number of such places, so that in the pairing season the whole neighbourhood resounds with its love song, which even overpowers the croaking of the frogs. There are usually large numbers of the birds near together, and all join with one voice in the concert. It goes on from morning till night. Indeed during the most eager time of its wooing it goes on all night.
The song is sometimes expressed thus:—
Where the reeds are thickest it shoots between them, as a weaver’s shuttle shoots between the threads. What is still more clever is the way in which it climbs about the straight tall stalks of the reeds. It clasps the reed with its toes and claws, and immediately it seems to be up on the top, then in a moment it slides down again and vanishes among the reeds. And of what use is all this? This bird is of use in its own way, in places inaccessible to others. It destroys innumerable grubs and insects, which frequent water and boggy land, and does its best to make such places habitable. The food of this Reed Warbler consists principally of insects and their larvæ, although in the autumn, like most creatures, instinct teaches it to eat some fruit for health’s sake, in the shape of berries, particularly those of the elder.
The nest of this Reed Warbler is one of the marvels
of bird architecture. It is a real work of art, because, in its perfect suitability for its purpose, it shows an amount of calculation that few men would think a bird capable of.
Whoever is acquainted with the nature of marshland, and the reed beds that border it, knows that on the smooth surface of the water, the breeze, the wind, the storm have free course, and can at times bluster and rage. Everyone also knows that the lightest breezes moves the leaves of the reeds, bends their stems and sets the whole wilderness of them in motion, like the water itself. The wisdom of Nature has placed this bird of the reed beds here, and so formed it that it could live nowhere else. Therefore it must build its nest in this unstable-looking spot and can do so in perfect safety; so that it can lay its eggs, hatch them, tend the young birds which are at first blind, feed them and bring them up until they are fledged and like their parents.
It is no small undertaking to build among the bending stems a nest which will afford security in calm weather and also in storm! If the bird fastened it to one stem, and the wind were to come, the fastenings would soon be torn away, and all destroyed.
What then does the bird do? It chooses three or four stems at about equal distances standing near to each other. On these it darns and knits its nest in the shape of a high, eastern, fur hat reversed: attaching it also with tough grass to the reed in such a manner that it can give way on the stalk when it waves in the wind, so that the stalk cannot tear the nest. The cup of the nest is deep, narrowing a little at the upper edge to prevent anything falling out when moved by the wind. In this nest the Reed Warbler lays five or six eggs of pale green with darker speckles, which are hatched in fourteen days. It is a perfect work of art.
The Great Reed Warbler is 8 inches in length, that is, an inch less than a Thrush; and its form is not unlike that of the Thrush. The upper side is brown, shading into rust colour; over the eye is a lighter stripe, and round the ears the plumage is also a lighter colour. The underparts are whitish, tinged on the sides with yellowish clay colour. Beak like that of the Thrush, rather strong, slightly curved, pointed. Legs strong, suited for clinging. The nest is treated of separately.
We have a smaller relative of this bird in England, although it is not known in Scotland, and is only said to have been taken once in Ireland. Our Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus streperus) arrives regularly in the latter end of April, to stay until September. It is common in those places that suit its way of living, in the Midlands and the Southern and Eastern counties. In form it resembles its larger relative. This species does not confine itself to reeds or to watery quarters; it has even been known to build in a garden at Hampstead. The slender branches of willows or alder beside a running stream suit it well. Still it prefers reeds, and its nest also is supported by being woven about and through three or four, or even two reeds. The building is begun whilst the reeds are short, but by the time the young are hatched the nest is three feet above the water. That wandering creature the Cuckoo will even drop her egg into this hanging nest; indeed she is fond of it. The song of this species is at its loudest and pleasant during the long summer twilight. It is a useful little bird.
This bird is called the Willow Wren because it loves the willow trees, the leaves of which, both in form and colour, are adapted to hide and protect it.
Its nest is well hidden, being often placed near the ground, under overhanging grasses and bushes, and built of materials found immediately around the chosen site; it can only be discovered by the eyes of an experienced bird-nester. It is covered over. The clutch consists of five or six little white eggs, speckled with reddish-brown.
It is a lively, active bird, that likes to frequent the tops of trees in thick woods, where it hops briskly from twig to twig, and is never still. But neither its colour nor its movements betray its presence and nature as does its voice, which is really extraordinarily strong and far-reaching, considering how tiny is the singer, and still more tiny its vocal organ. Its song is heard in spring, and sounds like Zilp-Zalp, Zilp-Zalp, and so on. Its busy call-note is Whit, whit! It feeds on the insects which it finds on the trees. In autumn, when starving, it eats elder-berries and such things, but does no harm whatever. As a loud harbinger of spring, and a bringer of glad-tidings we welcome and protect it.
About the first week in April the Willow Wren comes to us in England, where it is the commonest of the three small greenish-yellow Warblers that come to us—the Chiff-chaff and the Wood Wren are its congeners. Owing to the shape of its domed nest it has been given the name of Oven-bird; indeed all three are known by that name, and the Willow Wren also by that of Hay-bird, because of the dry materials it uses for its nest. This species is very useful to the gardener, as its food consists almost entirely of insects, flies and aphides.
The Willow Wren is a little longer than the Chiff-chaff and an inch longer than the Wren. The upper parts, except the crown, is greenish-brown, passing into a yellow tinge; the underparts white, breast and throat pale yellow; the cheeks golden-brown, the inside of the wings yellow, legs brownish; the under side of the toes yellow. All is subdued, nothing glaring on this delicately coloured bird; indeed, all is delicate, including the bill, which is pointed and adapted for investigating the tiniest cracks and bud axels.
The habits of the Spotted Flycatcher are quite different from those of its feathered companions in garden and forest, such as the Tits; for while the latter are always moving, darting here, hunting there, the Flycatcher sits quietly on the extreme end of a bough, on some point, or on a post, and watches for flying insects exclusively; flies, beetles; or near the bee-house it lies in wait for drones, but it never snaps at a stinging bee or wasp. It is quiet, only occasionally moving first one wing and then the other, as if to ascertain that they are in working order; then, as soon as it sees a flying insect, it darts forward, sure of aim as the Swallow, seizes its prey, and flies back in a fine curve to its post of observation.
The Flycatcher then, belongs to the useful birds, especially in gardens, where it destroys the harmful insects which fly among the trees. If it should happen to make away with the gall-insect, among others in the woods, that will not outweigh its good deeds. In gardens, at all events, it ought to be cherished and protected. Place a nest-box, such as it loves, with a wide opening, and let it nest there. There is not much to be said for its song; its call note is “Tschee, tschee.”
The Spotted Flycatcher is one of our latest British spring migrants, its usual time for coming is about the first week in May. Although it feeds almost exclusively on insects, it has been known to eat the berries of the mountain ash; I have noticed indeed that these disappear
before the birds more quickly than other wild berries. It is local with us in its breeding habits. It is one of the few species which still breed in some of our London parks and the larger gardens in town. The nest may be found among old creepers, but in the country it is often built on the beam of an outbuilding, and so it has been called the Beam-bird. It is a charming little creature to note as it sweeps round in quest of insect life. I was once watching a nest in a creeper on the porch of an old farmhouse. The young birds, tightly packed within, gasped greedily for the food brought by their parents. One had a fly too big for its swallow; it was stuck in its throat, and the fledgling graciously allowed me to push it down with a pin.
It is a charming sight to see the parent bird catch its prey when on the wing, and carrying it promptly to the nest within the creeper. “Not only tiny insects and moths go there, but also the bodies, denuded of their wings, of many a white cabbage butterfly, which would otherwise have deposited her small white eggs on the leaves of the cauliflowers in the kitchen garden close at hand. These eggs would become green grubs, which would injure the plants and make them unfit for food. The quick eyes of the bird and his clever flight put an end to the mischief so far as many a cauliflower is concerned. Flies, beetles, and aphides in hosts are devoured—the last especially during August, when they come in myriads from hop fields, or fruit trees—damsons; and the Flycatchers will clear the gooseberry bushes of the hurtful sawfly. Macgillivray has recorded that he noted a parent bird bring food to the nest five hundred and thirty-seven times during one day! Flycatchers come back to the same nesting place year after year. They may take a little fruit from you in the shape of red currants, but this is open to doubt. Like other creatures, a change of diet is, perhaps, valuable to them; but their labours during the early summer surely entitle them to a share of the fruit.”[3]
The Spotted Flycatcher is a little grey bird, smaller than the sparrow. The upper side of its body is mouse-colour, the underside whitish: on the breast and about the eyes are dark specks. The beak is black, flattened out wider at the base; the upper half of it furnished with stiff bristles on each side of the base to prevent its prey escaping. Legs black and weak; eyes dark and bright. The nest is usually built in trees, stumps of boughs, near the trunk, also in holes, but never very deep ones. It is beautifully woven, of fine moss, lichens, fine rootlets and grass, and is lined with wool, feathers and horse-hair. It contains five eggs of light grey-green, with dark marble-like veining and specks of rust-colour; the speckling is sometimes thicker in a ring round the larger end.
The male Pied Flycatcher is so strikingly marked a bird that he is almost dazzling to the eye. Yet he is only in black and white, but his markings are very decided. The female is more quietly feathered, the frontlet, wing-patches and under parts are a buffish-white, whilst her upper parts are olive-green. The bill is just like that of its congener already described. The nest is made in a hole in some tree, of dry grass, moss and rootlets with a lining of hair.
This species prefers warmer districts, where it remains chiefly in leafy woods. The bird is a charming little object as it disports itself amongst the young green of oak and beech woods. When on the lookout for its prey it prefers to perch on some old withered tree branch. And so gentle and small it looks one would not dream of its injuring a fly. Yet, for the great benefit of the woods, it is keen in pursuit of flies, gnats and other “small deer.” It will agitate its little wings in front of the larger hollows in old trees, so as to create a slight wind which will rouse and bring out lurking insects to become the prey of this disturber of their peace. In the high beech woods this Flycatcher pounces on the little insects that play in the rays of sunlight that filter through the openings between the branches. A beautiful bird this and well deserving protection.
In Great Britain this species is far less numerous than its congener. It is, however, a regular visitor to some of our counties. Its song is like that of the Redstart.
This is a lively and vigilant bird. It selects a district, to which it afterwards remains faithful. It likes fallow ground, stony hollows, marsh-land, sandy depressions where there are undulations, also meadows where there are grass-grown mole-hills or grass plots. From one of these small eminences it surveys the surrounding land, and on seeing prey instantly makes for it, and having caught it flies on to another stone or hillock. It also perches on low posts, but only takes to a tree in case of need. As it prefers to be in the open, it is often visible, for when it begins to fly it spreads out its tail and the white feathers at once attract attention. It is a very useful bird, for it lives entirely upon grubs and insects. In autumn it destroys the caterpillars of the white cabbage butterfly. The modest little song is not heard only from the hillocks and stones on which it perches, but also high up in the air when wooing his bride with sweet sounds. It is fairly common in Hungary.
About the middle of March the Wheatear, with its graceful motions, begins to arrive in numbers on our own Southern and Eastern coasts. It flits over downs and fallow lands, some pairs remaining to make nests in old rabbit holes, and in sandy warrens near the coast, others passing on after a brief rest, seeking higher latitudes—the rocky moorlands of the Peak, the fallows of
agricultural districts in the Midlands, the mountains of Scotland. The old hole of a Sand-martin in a railway cutting, a crevice in a stone wall, the lee side of a boulder stone, or merely the shelter of a clod of earth in a fallow field serves his purpose. As regards a nesting site, the Wheatear is exceedingly adaptable, suiting himself to the locality. And so the popular names given to this bird seem often misleading to a student of its life-history. In the Southern counties as the “Fallow Chat” it is best known, in Lancashire and Derbyshire it is “Walltack,” “Stonecheek,” “Stone-smack,” or “Smutch”: and this in Staffordshire is “Stone Smasher.” But tack and cheek and smutch all come from the bird’s sharp note “Chack, chack!” uttered as it flits from stone to stone on high land or along the wind-swept downs and warrens.
Steinschmätzer is the German name for the Wheatear; so the Lancashire name of Stonesmatch is decidedly Saxon. Schmatzen is to kiss heartily—to give a good smack in fact. The French name for this bird, Traquet, was given because of the continual movement of the wings and tail, which is compared to the traquet, or clapper of mills, which is kept in motion by the wind or by the water.
All works on natural history describe the beautiful Wheatear as always wary and shy to a degree, and chiefly, as we have already said, to be found on warrens and poor lands near the coast, but as being especially plentiful about our South Downs. In other districts, too, it frequents the open ground and rough hillocky pastures. But who would look for the Wheatear amongst the old slag-heaps, in the very heart of the North Staffordshire Potteries? where, too, the bird seems to lay aside its shy and wary little manœuvres.
Mr. Wells Bladen, the well-known Staffordshire ornithologist, reports on the Wheatear, which arrived earlier than usual, telling us that he saw one on a slag-heap at Etruria on March 3rd. In April again he witnessed the curious sight of five Wheatears, mobbing a Kestrel on their slag-heap and driving off the intruder quickly. In June there were at least a dozen of these birds frequenting the heap, and one pair had nested within twenty feet of a very busy railway siding. The nest, with its lovely pale blue eggs, was in a hole in a bank of fused clinkers, two feet from the ground. The eggs were hatched safely, but the young birds were unfortunately killed by some mischievous person before they were old enough to leave the nest. It was a pity the bird made its nest so near the ground, for, as a rule the great heaps which railway passengers between Stoke and Crewe have seen and wondered at, by night as well as by day, are little interfered with, or trespassed on. The dreary slag-heaps in the neighbourhood of blast-furnaces would appear to be spots equally unattractive to man and beast, and especially so to that brightly marked migrant the Wheatear, as it is known on the sunny, wind-swept downs and sandhills near the sea. In August again, one was seen on a railway waggon.
Wheatears leave us by the beginning of October, but now and again a few stray birds are said to winter here in mild districts.
The Wheatear has the crown, back of the head and back a beautiful ashen-grey; throat a faint buffish-white. There is a black stripe from the bill to the eye, which broadens out towards the ear. Underparts nearly white, breast yellowish. The side feathers of the wings are white towards the base—at the end black; the middle feathers entirely black. Bill awl-shaped, and, like the legs, black. The female bird and the young are less varied in colour. The Wheatear hides its nest away in heaps of stones, and crevices of the earth, and is most discreet as a rule in ensuring its safety. It lays five eggs, occasionally seven, which are usually of a uniform pale-blue colour, sometimes faintly dotted.
This lively little bird—that is the male bird—has the following characteristics: head, throat, nape, and back black. A conspicuous white patch on the wing-coverts. Under wing-coverts and axillaries black and white. Bill small and awl-shaped, legs and feet black.
It hides its nest so well, that it is difficult to find. It is usually built on the ground in a slight dip, so that the heads of the fledglings are level with the surface of the ground, and thus it merges into its surroundings. Five bluish grey eggs, speckled with brown, are usually found in the nest.
The Stonechat is a very pleasant bird, that seems, wherever it may be, to live by itself. It always sits on the topmost part of a bush, and thence looks attentively on to the ground, yet is quite conscious of all the insects and chafers flying about, for it is an alert captor. Sometimes it looks as if it were turning a summersault in the air, which is always a sign that it has disturbed a beetle in its flight and snapped him up.
This little Black-throat is more a bird of the foothills, where it loves the rocky dips where a few bushes render these not quite bare. It will suddenly appear on the top of a bush, the point of a moth-mullein or a nettle—always on a high perch—gives one look round, swallows an insect, and disappears as if by magic. Soon after it will appear in another spot, and go through the same performance. Meanwhile it wags its little tail, spreading it out. Late in the autumn, before its migration, it comes nearer to human dwellings, and carries on its pursuit of insects, among the hedges. It even ventures into the kitchen garden, where the cabbage stumps, and vegetable stalks are a favourable position, from which it can easily secure its prey. Its song is clear, pleasing, but not loud. Its call is “Weet, weet, weet—tek, tek, tek.”
The birds arrive in Hungary singly.
In Great Britain the Stonechat is a resident in most parts, although such as have bred in the colder districts migrate to more sheltered places in winter. At that season we have a number of arrivals from such parts of the Continent as are too cold for these birds to remain in. Grubs, worms, insects, and beetles are its chief diet, to which it adds a few small seeds. A very destructive insect which they take is known as the Bean Weevil. It is about a quarter of an inch in length; and it finds lodging among the whins, which the Chat family frequent. This beetle also haunts the rhubarb flowers in our gardens and visits the peas, selecting, it is said, always the finest of these in which to lay her eggs. Daddy-longlegs, cattle-flies, wire-worms, small snails, and slugs are also eaten by the Chats—especially the Whinchat, Pratincola rubétra, which comes to the South in middle of April, reaching the North early in May. It has a long white streak over the eye, which is a distinguishing feature of this species, also its underparts are buff, turning to bright fawn colour on the breast and throat. The crown and upper parts are mottled equally with sandy-buff and dark brown. Its bill is less delicate than that of the Stonechat.
The Bearded Tit is the ornament of the Reed-lands. Its feathers being unusually fine and light, the brilliant black moustache gives it all the more charming and attractive an appearance. It usually slips round in the high reeds about which it clambers very cleverly. The nest is placed between the stalks of the reeds, and is composed chiefly of their leaves, the colour of which harmonises with that of the bird’s long tail, so that the latter, which stands out of the nest, cannot be distinguished from its surroundings. The clutch consists of five to seven eggs, which have light brown specks and stripes on a white ground.
With the disappearance of the reeds, the number of the birds diminishes.
That is why we have not in England so many of this lovely species as we used to have. Our fens and meres in Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge Shires, as well as in Kent, Sussex, and Essex, also in Suffolk having been drained, the birds that lived in these have naturally left them. We are glad, however, to know that Bearded Tits are increasing again in the Norfolk Broads, owing to protection from the greed of private collectors. The great naturalist, Buffon, declared that the male bird has the charming habit of covering his mate with his wings to protect her alike from unkind winds and the burning heat of the sun, as she sits on her nest. Trinkin, the peasants of Anjon call it because of the metallic tone of its cry. In the Norfolk Broads it has been known as the Reed Pheasant. Scientists have found that this species differs in its digestive organs and other points from the Titmouse family, and that it is, as the late Professor Newton remarks, a perfectly distinct form, representing the family Panuridæ, instead of forming one species of the Paridæ.
It feeds on the seeds of the reeds in winter and in summer on small molluscs.
This bird, which is a beautiful and delightful bird in every respect, is the size of a Yellow-Hammer. Its feathers are of a silky fineness. The head is bluish-grey; from the corner of the mouth on each side, hangs a pointed, silky black moustache, which can be raised erect on occasion. The nape and back are cinnamon brown, which is lighter over the root of the tail; the tail is deep black underneath, and is wedge-shaped with feathers of graduated length. The wings are striped with buffish-white, black and rufous; the quills are brown with white outer borders. The throat and chest are snow white, the under parts white with a flush of rose colour at the sides. The pupil of the eye is golden yellow.[4]
In respect to usefulness and activity, this bird takes the foremost place among the Tits: restless, noisy, and always cheerful from morning to night. It clings to the end of the twigs, head downwards, to look for insects underneath the buds; it even climbs up walls if they are rough and uneven. It slips into holes and crevices which seem impossible of entry. It pursues insects everywhere, and swallows them wholesale, as though it could never be satisfied. It has no fear of men, but comes confidently under the roof and perches on the gate, or looks in at the window from the window sill. It is courageous, even bold, and boundlessly inquisitive, a trait which often places its life and liberty in peril. For the sake of a little fat it will allow itself to be snared in a gourd or other trap. But it is just these qualities that make it so popular.
Its voice sounds like “tzit” or “sitzida, sitzida.” This beautiful, kindly bird deserves every protection.
Our sympathies are quite with this bright active creature, although some of our English naturalists accuse it of using its strong beak in order to split the skull of small weakly birds so as to feast on their brains. It has even been known to treat a Bat in this manner. We recognise it readily in the early spring by its note which is like the noise caused by the sharpening of a saw with a file.
Two years ago I saw the largest company of Tits—Great Tits, Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Marsh Tits and Crested
Tits—together with a great number of tiny and beautiful gold-crested Wrens, that I have ever seen, or indeed can ever hope to see again. It was in a pine forest about twenty miles north of Gotha, the property of Hans Freiherr von Berlepsch, Germany’s most ardent bird protector. He was with us at the time and he said even he had never seen the like before, nor had his chief gamekeeper, who is himself an ornithologist. It was the more wonderful because we had walked for nearly three hours through the woods that morning and had seen, with this great exception, little wild life beyond an occasional black Squirrel and, through an avenue of pines from afar, a grand Buck feeding in a clearing. It was in the late autumn.
Nearly three thousand nesting-boxes have been fixed in the trees there, and it was about one of these, a deep one, that a number of Tits had appropriated as a warm and secure sleeping place for the autumn and winter, that the birds—three hundred of them at least the gamekeeper declared—had gathered; now pouncing down on it, a dozen of them at a time, now settling in noisy zi-zi-zi-ing parties on the high branches of pine round this centre. Perhaps, like Rooks that quarrel over a desirable nesting site, they were all eager to secure specially desirable sleeping quarters. Tits and Wrens do, of course, always go about the woods in parties, when family cares are over, but on such a scale as this rarely; and so many dainty Golden-Crested Wrens together might not be seen again in a life-time. All the species of the Tit family, excepting the Bearded and the Long-tailed Tit were there.
The amount of good these birds do among forest trees is incalculable, not to mention their greatly misunderstood labours in ridding the blossoms of our fruit trees of their infesting insect pests. Tits are, in fact, most energetic and active insect destroyers.
The Great Tit is a lively bird about the size of a Sparrow. The crown, neck, and throat black; cheeks white. A black stripe runs from the throat over the breast and under parts. The mantle is bright green; rump, tail, and wings plum colour, with oblique whitish stripes on the wings. The under side of the body is a beautiful bright yellow on either side of the black stripe. The short, strong beak is shaped like a grain of wheat and brown in colour; the strong legs are bluish. It builds its nest delicately, and usually in such hollow places as have a narrow opening, sometimes even in empty beehives. It lays six to nine—sometimes, though rarely, as many as fifteen—eggs, which are finely formed, of a pure white, with speckles of a beautiful rust colour.
Crown bright blue, forehead and cheeks white. A dark stripe is drawn from above the eyes towards the nape. The white cheeks are edged at the back and underneath, with black. The under part and rump are sulphur-yellow, or rather lemon colour. Tail and wings blue, like the bloom on a ripe plum. There is an oblique white stripe on the wings. The beak is like a little grain of wheat. Legs bluish. The nest is placed in holes of trees with small opening and is composed of soft stuff and is very lightly built. The clutch consists of seven to ten eggs, which are like those of the Great-tit, only much smaller. As many as eighteen eggs have been recorded as being found in one nest.
It is one of the prettiest and most useful birds, and in its actions resembles the other Tits. The number of insects destroyed by these rises into millions, and it has been observed that one pair, in the course of seventeen hours brought food to their young 475 times. Its cry is clear and piercing: “Tgi, tgi, tgi”—or “Ze, ze, zirr,” or “Ze, ze, he-he-he-he-he.”
It is a real treasure, and not rare in Hungary.
The Blue-tit is one of our best known and best liked British birds. In the autumn great numbers arrive on our east coasts. The Blue-tit, especially, devours a powerful tiny beetle with the ominous name of Scolytus destructor, which works its way from the chrysalis stage at the end of a tunnel bored by the mother beetle in the tree, until it comes out, after biting a round hole in the
bark, as a perfect beetle. By this small creature’s labours the bark is separated to such an extent from the tree that it cannot live long. A plague of other small wood-boring beetles of like habits destroyed 1,500,000 trees in the Harz Forest one season, when the priests even prayed in their churches for relief from this awful pest. And yet there are still numbers of country gardeners who look upon the Blue-tit, especially, as one of their worst enemies.
A house with large grounds in our populous London suburb is a large boys’ school—a private one. One day I saw a pretty sight, one that did credit to the character of the boys there. Between the playground and the cricket field is an iron fence, having a wide gate. For some time this has not been properly closed, and just within the hole in the tubular iron post, into which the fastening bolt ought to run, a pair of Blue-Tits have their nest. As I approached it, a number of gaping mouths were thrust up for food. As the nestlings are fed with aphides and gooseberry moths and the old birds have a large family to feed, and they prey also on grubs and maggots, it is well for the vegetable garden close by.
About sixty boys pass noisily to and fro through this gateway during play-hours, but the wise parents think they know better than to feed them in the sight of these. All is done during school time and early in the morning.
A friend tells me that he knows of a Blue-Tit’s nest in an exactly similar position. When the bird was sitting he kicked the bottom of the iron post, and put his finger in the hole. Up flew the bold little creature, hissing like a snake, and bit vigorously at it, fully justifying her rural nickname of Billy-biter.
I am glad to think that some of my schoolboy neighbours will read this, and will know that their forbearance towards these little birds is appreciated: a forbearance towards the defenceless which is always a distinguishing characteristic of the true gentleman.
The Blue-Tit is of great service to all flower and fruit growers, and it comes much to our suburban, and even London gardens. And yet gardeners at one time persecuted the little labourer, one of the prettiest and most winsome of our common birds.
Sitting in the garden of a house I formerly lived in, I noted there, in my apple trees laden with fruit, that the Tits—the Great, the Marsh, the Coal, and the Blue-Tit—that had not been much in evidence since April, when they were busy amongst the blossom buds, have come back, and they were busy now again amid the branches. Having read lately that they destroy the fruit, notably apples, in the autumn, I have watched them closely. It is as I expected: a number of the apples have been attacked by insects, and it is on these that the birds are busy, on fruit which if they did remain on the trees—they are now falling in numbers—would be quite worthless. The Tits enlarge the holes so as to get at the true destroyers, and they are doing more good than harm. As the Rev. F. O. Morris said, long ago, “the destruction of the Blue-tit by the farmer or gardener is an act of economical suicide.”
Tits will also sometimes have recourse to the orchard in times of drought, in order to quench their thirst by bites at the fruit. But we should be churlish indeed if we grudged our little unpaid labourers a small tithe of our harvest, which is the larger for their spring services.
This is the very smallest of our British birds, and indeed of all European species. It is found generally throughout Great Britain, and it has increased in the north greatly of late years owing to the greater cultivation of larch and fir-trees. The numbers of these Wrens are augmented often in autumn by great flocks that come to our eastern coast from the Continent. A migration wave of this sort, Mr. Howard Saunders told of, which lasted 92 days, and reached from the Channel to the Faroe Islands. Another migration in 1883 lasted 82 days, and one, the following year, 87 days. On such occasions bushes in gardens on the coast are covered with birds as with a swarm of bees; crowds flutter round the lighthouse lanterns, and often come to grief there, and weary little travellers climb about the rigging of fishing-smacks in the North Sea.
The Golden-Crested Wren is even smaller than the Common Wren, but its feathers are more flossy. It has on its crown a tongue-shaped patch of warm saffron yellow edged with black. The whole of the rest of its coat is of a plain greenish gray, which is lighter on the under parts of his body. The colour of the wings is also sober, the feathers having a lighter edge; the little beak is thin and pointed, the legs nearly black. The cunningly built nest is placed in the fir-trees where it can with difficulty be discovered. The eggs, which number six, occasionally eleven—of the size of peas—are reddish speckled with a darker shade of the same colour. This useful little bird, always active, hopping unweariedly about seeking food, lives exclusively on insects and grubs. Its dwelling is among pines and fir-trees; it often associates with the Tits, its call is “Sit, sit, sit.”
It is not rare, and is worth its weight in gold.
In order to learn habits of the Crested Tit it is necessary to climb high into the region of the firwoods. Here the Crested Tit is the good genius of the neighbourhood, for with untiring zeal it hops about among the thick branches of the fir labyrinth and destroys the most mischievous insects. Its call is “ziárrrr” or “zick güirr.” It is not rare in the pine forests of Hungary.
The Crested Tit breeds in a few of the oldest forests in Scotland where firs and oaks remain. In Perthshire it is seen, but to England it is a stranger, a few cases only, being on record. In Ireland also it is practically unknown.
The Crested Titmouse is much smaller than the Great Tit or Oxeye. It is easily recognised by its pointed head, which resembles that of the Crested Lark. The feathers of this are black, edged with white; the cheeks white; throat and round the ears black; so that the head has the appearance of being framed. Wings and tail greyish-brown, the feathers with whitish edges. Underneath it is a dingy white, rust colour at the sides. Its nest is carefully built, in holes and in trees. It lays from five to eight, sometimes ten, white eggs speckled with light rust colour. Two broods are generally brought out in the season.
These birds are seen in Germany, and elsewhere on the Continent, frequently in company with Golden-crested Wrens, other Tits and also Tree-creepers.