There is a bird that by his coat,And by the hoarseness of his noteMight be supposed a crow.Now the daw is capable at times of emitting both hoarse and harsh notes, and the same may perhaps be said of a majority of birds; but his usual note—the cry or caw varied and inflected a hundred ways, which we hear every day and all day long where daws abound—is neither harsh like the crow's, nor hoarse like the rook's. It is, in fact, as unlike the harsh, grating caw of the former species as the clarion call of the cock is unlike the grunting of swine. It may not be described as bell-like nor metallic, but it is loud and clear, with an engaging wildness in it, and, like metallic sounds, far-reaching; and of so gooda quality that very little more would make it ring musically.Sometimes when I go into this ancient abbey church, or into some cathedral, and seating myself, and looking over a forest of bonnets, see a pale young curate with a black moustache, arrayed in white vestments, standing before the reading-desk, and hear him gabbling some part of the Service in a continuous buzz and rumble that roams like a gigantic blue-bottle through the vast dim interior, then I, not following him—for I do not know where he is, and cannot find out however much I should like to—am apt to remember the daws out of doors, and to think that it would be well if that young man would but climb up into the highest tower, or on to the roof, and dwell there for the space of a year listening to them; and that he would fill his mouth with polished pebbles, and medals, and coins and seals and seal-rings, and small porcelain cats and dogs, and little silver pigs, and other objects from the chatelaines of his lady admirers, and strive to imitate that clear, penetrating sound of the bird's voice, until he had mastered the rare and beautiful arts of voice production and distinct understandable speech.To go back to Cowper—the poet who has been much in men's thoughts of late, and who appearsto us as perhaps the most modern-minded of those who ceased to live a century ago. Undoubtedly he was as bad a naturalist as any singer before or after him, and as any true poet has a perfect right to be. As bad, let us say, as Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Tennyson. He does not, it is true, confound the sparrow and hedge-sparrow like Wordsworth, nor confound the white owl with the brown owl like Tennyson, nor puzzle the ornithologist with a "sea-blue bird of March." But we must not forget that he addressed some verses to a nightingale heard on New Year's Day. It is clear that he did not know the crows well, for in a letter of May 10, 1780, to his friend Newton, he writes: "A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one of the young elm-trees, at the side of Mrs Aspray's orchard." But when he wrote those words—Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh,Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,And only there, please highly for their sake—words which I have suggested misled Ruskin, and have certainly misled others—he, Cowper, knew better. His real feeling, and better and wiser thought, is expressed in one of his incomparable letters (Hayley, vol. ii. p. 230)—"My green-house is never so pleasant as whenwe are just on the point of surrendering it.... I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I could hardly have more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ears as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are delightful, at least in this country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know no beast in England whose voice I do not account as musical, save and except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a farmyard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble tothe bass of the bumble-bee, I admire all. Seriously, however, it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to men, that such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited."Who has not felt the truth of this saying, that all natural sounds heard in their proper surroundings are pleasing; that even those which we call harsh do not distress, jarring or grating on our nerves, like artificial noises! The braying of the donkey was to Cowper the one exception in animal life; but he never heard it in its proper conditions. I have often listened to it, and have been deeply impressed, in a wild, silent country, in a place where herds of semi-wild asses roamed over the plains; and the sound at a distance had a wild expression that accorded with the scene, and owing to its much greater power effected the mind more than the trumpeting of wild swans, and shrill neighing of wild horses, and other far-reaching cries of wild animals.About the sounds emitted by geese in a state of nature, and the effect produced on the mind, I shall have something to say in a chapter on that bird.CHAPTER IVEARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FORESTWhen the spring-feeling is in the blood, infecting us with vague longings for we know not what; when we are restless and seem to be waiting for some obstruction to be removed—blown away by winds, or washed away by rains—some change that will open the way to liberty and happiness,—the feeling not unfrequently takes a more or less definite form: we want to go away somewhere, to be at a distance from our fellow-beings, and nearer, if not to the sun, at all events to wild nature. At such times I think of all the places where I should like to be, and one is Savernake; and thither in two following seasons I have gone to ramble day after day, forgetting the world and myself in its endless woods.It is not that spring is early there; on the contrary, it is actually later by many days than in the surrounding country. It is flowerless at a time when, outside the forest, on southern banks and by the hedge-side, in coppices and all shelteredspots, the firstlings of the year are seen—purple and white and yellow. The woods, which are composed almost entirely of beech and oak, are leafless. The aspect on a dull cold day is somewhat cheerless. On the other hand, there is that largeness and wildness which accord with the spring mood; and there are signs of the coming change even in the greyest weather. Standing in some wide green drive or other open space, you see all about you acres on acres, miles on miles, of majestic beeches, and their upper branches and network of terminal twigs, that look at a distance like heavy banked-up clouds, are dusky red and purple with the renewed life that is surging in them. There are jubilant cries of wild creatures that have felt the seasonal change far more keenly than we are able to feel it. Above everything, we find here that solitariness and absence of human interest now so rare in England. For albeit social creatures in the main, we are yet all of us at times hermits in heart, if not exactly wild men of the woods; and that solitude which we create by shutting ourselves from the world in a room or a house, is but a poor substitute—nay, a sham: it is to immure ourselves in a cage, a prison, which hardly serves to keep out the all-pervading atmosphereof miserable conventions, and cannot refresh and invigorate us. There are seasons and moods when even the New Forest does not seem sufficiently remote from life: in its most secluded places one is always liable to encounter a human being, an old resident, going about in the exercise of his commoner's rights; or else his ponies or cows or swine. These last, if they be not of some improved breed, may have a novel or quaint aspect, as of wild creatures, but the appearance is deceptive; as you pass they lift their long snouts from grubbing among the dead leaves to salute you with a too familiar grunt—an assurance that William Rufus is dead, and all is well; that they are domestic, and will spend their last days in a stye, and end their life respectably at the hands of the butcher.At Savernake there is nothing so humanised as the pig, even of the old type; you may roam for long hours and see no man and no domestic animal. You have heard that this domain is the property of some person, but it seems like a fiction. The forest is nature's and yours. There you are at liberty to ramble all day unchallenged by any one; to walk, and run to warm yourself; to disturb a herd of red deer, or of fallow deer, which are morenumerous; to watch them standing still to gaze back at you, then all with one impulse move rapidly away, showing their painted tails, keeping a kind of discipline, row behind row, moving over the turf with that airy tripping or mincing gait that strikes you as quaint and somewhat bird-like. Or you may coil yourself up, adder-like, beside a thick hawthorn bush, or at the roots of a giant oak or beech, and enjoy the vernal warmth, while outside of your shelter the wind blows bleak and loud.To lie or sit thus for an hour at a time listening to the wind is an experience worth going far to seek. It is very restorative. That is a mysterious voice which the forest has: it speaks to us, and somehow the life it expresses seems nearer, more intimate, than that of the sea. Doubtless because we are ourselves terrestrial and woodland in our origin; also because the sound is infinitely more varied as well as more human in character. There are sighings and moanings, and wails and shrieks, and wind-blown murmurings, like the distant confused talking of a vast multitude. A high wind in an extensive wood always produces this effect of numbers. The sea-like sounds and rhythmic volleyings, when the gale is at its loudest, die away,and in the succeeding lull there are only low, mysterious agitated whisperings; but they are multitudinous; the suggestion is ever of a vast concourse—crowds and congregations, tumultuous or orderly, but all swayed by one absorbing impulse, solemn or passionate. But not always moved simultaneously. Through the near whisperings a deeper, louder sound comes from a distance. It rumbles like thunder, falling and rising as it rolls onwards; it is antiphonal, but changes as it travels nearer. Then there is no longer demand and response; the smitten trees are all bent one way, and their innumerable voices are as one voice, expressing we know not what, but always something not wholly strange to us—lament, entreaty, denunciation.Listening, thinking of nothing, simply living in the sound of the wind, that strange feeling which is unrelated to anything that concerns us, of the life and intelligence inherent in nature, grows upon the mind. I have sometimes thought that never does the world seem more alive and watchful of us than on a still, moonlight night in a solitary wood, when the dusky green foliage is silvered by the beams, and all visible objects and the white lights and black shadows in the intervening spacesseem instinct with spirit. But it is not so. If the conditions be favourable, if we go to our solitude as the crystal-gazer to his crystal, with a mind prepared, this faculty is capable of awaking and taking complete possession of us by day as well as by night.As the trees are mostly beeches—miles upon miles of great trees, many of them hollow-trunked from age and decay—the fallen leaves are an important element in the forest scenery. They lie half a yard to a yard deep in all the deep hollows and dells and old water-worn channels, and where the ground is sheltered they cover acres of ground—millions and myriads of dead, fallen beech leaves. These, too, always seem to be alive. It is a leaf that refuses to die wholly. When separated from the tree it has, if not immortality, at all events a second, longer life. Oak and ash and chestnut leaves fade from month to month and blacken, and finally rot and mingle with the earth, while the beech leaf keeps its sharp clean edges unbroken, its hard texture and fiery colour, its buoyancy and rustling incisive sound. Swept by the autumn winds into sheltered hollows and beaten down by rains, the leaves lie mingled in one dead, sodden mass for days and weeks at a time, and appearready to mix with the soil; but frost and sun suck up the moisture and the dead come to life again. They glow like fire, and tremble at every breath. It was strange and beautiful to see them lying all around me, glowing copper and red and gold when the sun was strong on them, not dead, but sleeping like a bright-coloured serpent in the genial warmth; to see, when the wind found them, how they trembled, and moved as if awakening; and as the breath increased rose up in twos and threes and half-dozens here and there, chasing one another a little way, hissing and rustling; then all at once, struck by a violent gust, they would be up in thousands, eddying round and round in a dance, and, whirling aloft, scatter and float among the lofty branches to which they were once attached.On a calm day, when there was no motion in the sunlit yellow leaves below and the reddish-purple cloud of twigs above, the sounds of bird-life were the chief attraction of the forest. Of these the cooing of the wood-pigeon gave me the most pleasure. Here some reader may remark that this pigeon's song is a more agreeable sound than its plain cooing note. This, indeed, is perhaps thought little of. In most biographies of the bird it is not even mentioned that he possessessuch a note. Nevertheless I prefer it to the song. The song itself—the set melody composed of half a dozen inflected notes, repeated three or four times with little or no variation—is occasionally heard in the late winter and early spring, but at this time of the year it is often too husky or croaky to be agreeable. The songster has not yet thrown off his seasonal cold; the sound might sometimes proceed from a crow suffering from a catarrh. It improves as the season advances. The song is sometimes spelt in books:Coo-coó-roo, coó-coo-roo.A lady friend assures me the right words of this song are:Taketwocows, David.She cannot, if she tries, make the bird say anything different, for these are the words she was taught to hear in the song, as a child, in Leicestershire. Of course they are uttered with a great deal of emotion in the tone, David being tearfully, almost sobbingly, begged and implored to take two cows; the emphasis is very strong on the two—it is apparently a matter of the utmost consequence that David should not take one, nor three, nor any other number of cows, but just two.In East Anglia I have been informed that what the bird really and truly says is—My toe bleeds, Betty.Many as are the species capable of articulate speech, as we may see by referring to any ornithological work, there is no bird in our woods whose notes more readily lend themselves to this childish fancy than the wood-pigeon, on account of the depth and singularly human quality of its voice. The song is a passionate complaint. One can fancy the human-like feathered creature in her green bower, pleading, upbraiding, lamenting; and, listening, we will find it easy enough to put it all into plain language:O swear not you love me, for you cannot be true,O perjured wood-pigeon! Go from me—wooSome other! Heart-broken I rueThat softness, ah me! when you cooed your false coo.Soar to your new love—the creature in blue!Who, who would have thought it of you!And perhaps you consider her beau—Oo—tiful! O you are too too cru—Bid them come shoo—oot me, do, do!Would I had given my heart to a hoo—Oo-ting wood-owl, cuckoo, woodcock, hoopoo!One morning, at a village in Berkshire, I was walking along the road, about twenty-five yards from a cottage, when I heard, as I imagined, the familiar song of the wood-pigeon; but it soundedtoo close, for the nearest trees were fifty yards distant. Glancing up at the open window of an upper room in the cottage, I made the discovery that my supposed pigeon was a four-year-old child who had recently been chastised by his mother and sent upstairs to do penance. There he sat by the open window, his face in his hands, crying, not as if his heart would break, but seeming to take a mournful pleasure in the rhythmical sound of his own sobs and moans; they had settled into a rising and fallingboo-hoo, with regularly recurring long and short notes, agreeable to the ear, and very creditable to the little crier's musical capacity. The incident shows how much the pigeon's plaint resembles some human sounds.The plain cooing note is so common in this order of birds that it may be regarded as the original and universal pigeon language, out of which the set songs have been developed, with, in most instances, but little change in the quality of the sound. In the multitude of species there are voices clear, resonant, thick, or husky, or guttural, hollow or booming, grating and grunting; but, however much they vary, you can generally detect thepigeonorfamilysound, which is more or less human-like. In some species the set song hasalmost superseded the plain single note, which has diminished to a mere murmur; in others, on the contrary, there is no song at all, unless the single unvaryingcoocan be called a song. In most species in the typical genus Columba the plain coo is quite distinct from the set song, but has at the same time developed into a kind of second song, the note being pleasantly modulated and repeated many times. We find this in the rock-dove: the curious guttural sounds composing its set song, whichaccompanythe love antics of the male, are not musical, while the clear inflected cooing note is agreeable to most ears. It is a pleasing morning sound of the dove-cote; but the note, to be properly appreciated, must be heard in some dimly lighted ocean-cavern in which the bird breeds in its wild state. The long-drawn, oft-repeated musical coo mingles with and is heard above the murmuring and lapping of the water beneath; the hollow chamber retains and prolongs the sound, and makes it more sonorous, and at the same time gives it something of mystery.Of all the cooing notes of the different species I am acquainted with, that of the stock-dove, a pigeon with no set song, is undoubtedly the most attractive: next in order is that of the wood-pigeon on account of its depth and human-likecharacter. And it is far from monotonous. In this wood in March I have often kept near a pigeon for half an hour at a time hearing it uttering its cooing note, repeated half a dozen or more times, at intervals of three or four minutes; and again and again the note has changed in length and power and modulation. In the profound stillness, on a windless day, of the vast beechen woods, these sonorous notes had a singularly beautiful effect.After spending a short time in the forest, one might easily get the idea that it is a sanctuary for all the persecuted creatures of the crow family. It is not quite that; the ravens have been destroyed here as in most places; but the other birds of that tribe are so numerous that even the most bloodthirsty keeper might be appalled at the task of destroying them. The clearance would doubtless have been effected if this noble forest had passed, as so nearly happened, out of the hands of the family that have so long possessed it: that calamity was happily averted. Not only are the rooks there in legions, having their rookeries in the park, but, throughout the forest, daws, carrion crows, jays, and magpies are abundant. The jackdaws outnumber all the other species (rooks included) put together; they literally swarm, andtheir ringing, yelping cries may be heard at all hours of the day in any part of the forest. In March, when they are nesting, their numbers are concentrated in those parts of the wood where the trees, beech and oak, are very old and have hollow trunks. In some places you will find many acres of wood where every tree is hollow and apparently inhabited. Yet there are doubtless some hollow trees into which the daw is not permitted to intrude. The wood-owl is common here, and is presumably well able to hold his castle against all aggressors. If one could but climb into the airy tower, and, sitting invisible, watch the siege and defence and the many strange incidents of the war between these feathered foes! The daw, bold yet cautious, venturing a little way into the dim interior, with shrill threats of ejectment, ruffling his grey pate and peeping down with his small, malicious, serpent-like grey eyes; the owl puffing out his tiger-coloured plumage, and lifting to the light his pale, shield-like face and luminous eyes,—would indeed be a rare spectacle; and then, what hissings, snappings, and beak-clatterings, and shrill, cat-like, and yelping cries! But, although these singular contests go on so near us, a few yards above the surface, Savernake might be in themisty mid-region of Weir, or on the slopes of Mount Yanik, for all the chance we have of witnessing them.An experience I had one day when I was new to the forest and used occasionally to lose myself, gave me some idea of the numbers of jackdaws breeding in Savernake. During my walk I came to a spot where all round me and as far as could be seen the trees were in an advanced state of decay: not only were they hollow and rotten within, but the immense horizontal branches and portions of the trunks were covered with a thick crop of fern, which, mixed with dead grass and moss, gave the dying giants of the forest a strange, ragged and desolate appearance. Many a time looking at one of these trees I have been reminded of Holman Hunt's forlorn Scapegoat. Here the daws had their most populous settlement. As I advanced, the dead twigs and leaves crackling beneath my feet, they rose up everywhere, singly and in twos and threes and half-dozens, darting hurriedly away and disappearing among the trees before me. The alarm-note they emit at such times is like their usual yelping call subdued to a short, querulous chirp; and this note now sounded before me and on either hand, at a distance of about one hundred yards, uttered continually by so manybirds that their voices mingled into a curious sharp murmur. Tired of walking, I sat down on a root in the shelter of a large oak, and remained there perfectly motionless for about an hour. But the birds never lost their suspicion; all the time the distant subdued tempest of sharp notes went on, occasionally dying down until it nearly ceased, then suddenly rising and spreading again until I was ringed round with the sound. At length the loud, sharp invitation or order to fly was given and taken up by many birds; then, through the opening among the trees before me, I saw them rise in a dense flock and circle about at a distance: other flocks rose on the right and left hands and joined the first; and finally the whole mass come slowly overhead as if to explore; but when the foremost birds were directly over me the flock divided into two columns, which deployed to the right and left, and at a distance poured again into the trees. There could not have been fewer than two thousand birds in the flock that came over me, and they were probably all building in that part of the forest.The daw, whether tame or distrustful of man, is always interesting. Here I was even more interested in the jays, and it was indeed chiefly for the pleasure of seeing them, when they are bestto look at, that I visited this forest. I had also formed the idea that there was no place in England where the jay could be seen to better advantage, as they are, or until recently were, exceedingly abundant at Savernake, and were not in constant fear of the keeper and his everlasting gun. Here one could witness their early spring assemblies, when the jay, beautiful at all times, is seen at his very best.It is necessary to say here that this habit of the jay does not appear to be too well known to our ornithologists. When I stated in a small work onBritish Birdsa few years ago that jays had the custom of congregating in spring, a distinguished naturalist, who reviewed the book in one of the papers, rebuked me for so absurd a statement, and informed me that the jay is a solitary bird except at the end of summer and in the early autumn, when they are sometimes seen in families. If I had not made it a rule never to reply to a critic, I could have informed this one that I knew exactly where his knowledge of the habits of the jay was derived-that it dated back to a book published ninety-nine years ago. It was a very good book, and all it contains, some errors included, have been incorporated in most of the important ornithological works which have appeared during thenineteenth century. But though my critic thus "wrote it all by rote," according to the books, "he did not write it right." The ancient error has not, however, been repeated by all writers on the subject. Seebohm, in hisHistory of British Birds, wrote: "Sometimes, especially in Spring, fortune may favour you, and you will see a regular gathering of these noisy birds.... It is only at this time that the jay displays a social disposition; and the birds may often be heard to utter a great variety of notes, some of the modulations approaching almost to a song."The truth of the statement I have made that most of our writers on birds have strictly followed Montague in his account of the jay's habits, unmistakably shows itself in all they say about the bird's language. Montagu wrote in his famousDictionary of Birds(1802):—"Its common notes are various, but harsh; will sometimes in spring utter a sort of song in a soft and pleasing manner, but so low as not to be heard at any distance; and at intervals introduce the bleatings of a Lamb, mewing of a Cat, the note of a Kite or Buzzard, hooting of an Owl, and even the neighing of a Horse."These imitations are so exact, even in a natural wild state, that we have frequently been deceived."This description somewhat amplified, and the wording varied to suit the writer's style, has been copied into most books on British birds—the lamb and the cat, and the kite and the horse, faithfully appearing in most cases. Yet it is certain that if all the writers had listened to the jay's vocal performances for themselves, they would have given a different account. It is not that Montagu was wrong: he went to nature for his facts and put down what he heard, or thought he heard, but the particular sounds which he describes they would not have heard.My experience is, that the same notes and phrases are not ordinarily heard in any two localities; that the bird is able to emit a great variety of sounds—some highly musical; that he is also a great mimic in a wild irregular way, mixing borrowed notes with his own, and flinging them out anyhow, so that there is no order nor harmony, and they do not form a song.But he also has a real song, which may be heard in any assembly of jays and from some male birds after the congregating season is over and breeding is in progress. This singing of the jay is somewhat of a puzzle, as it is not the same song in any two places, and gives one the idea that there is no inherited and no traditional song in this species,but that each bird that has a song has invented it for himself. It varies from "a sort of low song," as Montagu said,—a soft chatter and warble which one can just hear at a distance of thirty or forty yards,—to a song composed of several musical notes harmoniously arranged, which may be heard distinctly a quarter of a mile away. This set and far-reaching song is rare, but some birds have a single very powerful and musical note, or short phrase, which they repeat at regular intervals by way of song. If by following up the sound one can get near enough to the tree where the meeting is being held to see what is going on, it is most interesting to watch the vocalist, who is like a leader, and who, perched quietly, continues to repeat that one powerful, unchanging, measured sound in the midst of a continuous concert of more or less musical sounds from the other birds.What I should very much like to know is, whether these powerful and peculiar notes, phrases, and songs of the jay, which are clearly not imitations of other species, are repeated year after year by the birds in the same localities, or are dropped for ever or forgotten at the end of each season. It is hard for me to find this out, because I do not as a rule revisit the same places in spring, and ongoing to a new or a different spot I find that the birds utter different sounds. Again, the places where jays assemble in numbers are very few and far between. It is true, as an observant gamekeeper once said to me, that if there are as many as half a dozen to a dozen jays in any wood they will contrive to hold a meeting; but when the birds are few and much persecuted, it is difficult to see and hear them at such times, and when seen and heard, no adequate idea is formed of the beauty of their displays, and the power and variety of their language, as witnessed in localities where they are numerous, and fear of the keeper's gun has not damped their mad, jubilant spirits.In genial weather the jays' assembly may be held at any hour, but is most frequently seen during the early part of the day: on a fine warm morning in March and April one can always count on witnessing an assembly, or at all events of hearing the birds, in any wood where they are fairly common and not very shy. They are so vociferous and so conspicuous to the eye during these social intervals, and at the same time so carried away by excitement, that it is not only easy to find and see them, but possible at times to observe them very closely.The loud rasping alarm- and angry-cry of the jay is a sound familiar to every one; the cry used by the bird to call his fellows together is somewhat different. It resembles the cry or call of the carrion crow, in localities where that bird is not persecuted, when, in the love season, he takes his stand on the top of the nesting-tree and calls with a prolonged, harsh, grating, and exceedingly powerful note, many times repeated. The jay's call has the same grating or grinding character, but is louder, sharper, more prolonged, and in a quiet atmosphere may be heard distinctly a mile away. The wood is in an uproar when the birds assemble and scream in concert while madly pursuing one another over the tall trees.At such times the peculiar flight of the jay is best seen and is very beautiful. In almost all birds that have short, round wings, as we may see in our little wren, and in game birds, and the sparrow-hawk, and several others, the wing-beats are exceedingly rapid. This is the case with the magpie; the quickness of the wing-beats causes the black and white on the quills to mingle and appear a misty grey; but at short intervals the bird glides and the wings appear black and white again. The jay, although his wings are so shortand round, when not in a hurry progresses by means of comparatively slow, measured wing-beats, and looks as if swimming rather than flying.It is when the gathered birds all finally settle on a tree that they are most to be admired. They will sometimes remain on the spot for half an hour or longer, displaying their graces and emitting the extraordinary medley of noises mixed with musical sounds. But they do not often sit still at such times; if there are many birds, and the excitement is great, some of them are perpetually moving, jumping and flitting from branch to branch, and springing into the air to wheel round or pass over the tree, all apparently intent on showing off their various colours—vinaceous brown, sky blue, velvet black, and glistening white—to the best advantage.Again and again, when watching these gatherings at Savernake and at other places where jays abound, I have been reminded of the description given by Alfred Russel Wallace of the bird of paradise assemblies in the Malayan region. Our jay in some ways resembles his glorious Eastern relation; and although his lustre is so much less, he is at his very best not altogether unworthy of being called the British Bird of Paradise.CHAPTER VA WOOD WREN AT WELLSEast of Wells Cathedral, close to the moat surrounding the bishop's palace, there is a beautifully wooded spot, a steep slope, where the birds had their headquarters. There was much to attract them there: sheltered by the hill behind, it was a warm corner, a wooded angle, protected by high old stone walls, dear to the redstart, masses of ivy, and thickets of evergreens; while outside the walls were green meadows and running water. When going out for a walk I always passed through this wood, lingering a little in it; and when I wanted to smoke a pipe, or have a lazy hour to myself among the trees, or sitting in the sun, I almost invariably made for this favourite spot. At different hours of the day I was a visitor, and there I heard the first spring migrants on their arrival—chiff-chaff, willow wren, cuckoo, redstart, blackcap, white-throat. Then, when April was drawing to an end, I said, There are no more to come. For the wryneck, lesser white-throat, andgarden warbler had failed to appear, and the few nightingales that visit the neighbourhood had settled down in a more secluded spot a couple of miles away, where the million leaves in coppice and brake were not set a-tremble by the melodious thunder of the cathedral chimes.Nevertheless, there was another still to come, the one I perhaps love best of all. On the last day of April I heard the song of the wood wren, and at once all the other notes ceased for a while to interest me. Even the last comer, the mellow blackcap, might have been singing at that spot since February, like the wren and hedge-sparrow, so familiar and workaday a strain did it seem to have compared with this late warbler. I was more than glad to welcome him to that particular spot, where if he chose to stay I should have him so near me.It is well known that the wood wren can only be properly seen immediately after his arrival in this country, at the end of April or early in May, when the young foliage does not so completely hide his slight unresting form, as is the case afterwards. For he, too, is green in colour; like Wordsworth's green linnet,A brother of the leaves he seems.There is another reason why he can be seen so much better during the first days of his sojourn with us: he does not then keep to the higher parts of the tall trees he frequents, as his habit is later, when the air is warm and the minute winged insects on which he feeds are abundant on the upper sun-touched foliage of the high oaks and beeches. On account of that ambitious habit of the wood wren there is no bird with us so difficult to observe; you may spend hours at a spot, where his voice sounds from the trees at intervals of half a minute to a minute, without once getting a glimpse of his form. At the end of April the trees are still very thinly clad; the upper foliage is but an airy garment, a slight golden-green mist, through which the sun shines, lighting up the dim interior, and making the bed of old fallen beech-leaves look like a floor of red gold. The small-winged insects, sun-loving and sensitive to cold, then hold their revels near the surface; and the bird, too, prefers the neighbourhood of the earth. It was so in the case of the wood wren I observed at Wells, watching him on several consecutive days, sometimes for an hour or two at a stretch, and generally more than once a day. The spot where he was always to be found was quite free from underwood, andthe trees were straight and tall, most of them with slender, smooth boles. Standing there, my figure must have looked very conspicuous to all the small birds in the place; but for a time it seemed to me that the wood wren paid not the slightest attention to my presence; that as he wandered hither and thither in sunlight and shade at his own sweet will, my motionless form was no more to him than a moss-grown stump or grey upright stone. By and by it became apparent that the bird knew me to be no stump or stone, but a strange living creature whose appearance greatly interested him; for invariably, soon after I had taken up my position, his careless little flights from twig to twig and from tree to tree brought him nearer, and then nearer, and finally near me he would remain for most of the time. Sometimes he would wander for a distance of forty or fifty yards away, but before long he would wander back and be with me once more, often perching so near that the most delicate shadings of his plumage were as distinctly seen as if I had had him perched on my hand.The human form seen in an unaccustomed place always excites a good deal of attention among the birds; it awakes their curiosity, suspicion, andalarm. The wood wren was probably curious and nothing more; his keeping near me looked strange only because he at the same time appeared so wholly absorbed in his own music. Two or three times I tried the experiment of walking to a distance of fifty or sixty yards and taking up a new position; but always after a while he would drift thither, and I would have him near me, singing and moving, as before.I was glad of this inquisitiveness, if that was the bird's motive (that I had unconsciously fascinated him I could not believe); for of all the wood wrens I have seen this seemed the most beautiful, most graceful in his motions, and untiring in song. Doubtless this was because I saw him so closely, and for such long intervals. His fresh yellowish-green upper and white under plumage gave him a wonderfully delicate appearance, and these colours harmonised with the tender greens of the opening leaves and the pale greys and silvery whites of the slender boles.Seebohm says of this species: "They arrive in our woods in marvellously perfect plumage. In the early morning sun they look almost as delicate a yellowish-green as the half-grown leaves amongst which they disport themselves. In thehand the delicate shading of the eye-stripe, and the margin of the feathers of the wings and tail, is exquisitely beautiful, but is almost all lost under the rude handling of the bird-skinner."The concluding words sound almost strange; but it is a fact that this sylph-like creature is sometimes shattered with shot and its poor remains operated on by the bird-stuffer. Its beauty "in the hand" cannot compare with that exhibited when it lives and moves and sings. Its appearance during flight differs from that of other warblers on account of the greater length and sharpness of the wings. Most warblers fly and sing hurriedly; the wood wren's motions, like its song, are slower, more leisurely, and more beautiful. When moved by the singing passion it is seldom still for more than a few moments at a time, but is continually passing from branch to branch, from tree to tree, finding a fresh perch from which to deliver its song on each occasion. At such times it has the appearance of a delicately coloured miniature kestrel or hobby. Most lovely is its appearance when it begins to sing in the air, for then the long sharp wings beat time to the first clear measured notes, the prelude to the song. As a rule, however, the flight is silent, and the song begins when the newperch is reached—first the distinct notes that are like musical strokes, and fall faster and faster until they run and swell into a long passionate trill—the woodland sound which is like no other.Charming a creature as the wood wren appears when thus viewed closely in the early spring-time, he is not my favourite among small birds because of his beauty of shape and colour and graceful motions, which are seen only for a short time, but on account of his song, which lasts until September; though I may not find it very easy to give a reason for the preference.It comforts me a little in this inquiry to remember that Wordsworth preferred the stock-dove to the nightingale—that "creature of ebullient heart." The poet was a little shaky in his ornithology at times; but if we take it that he meant the ring-dove, his preference might still seem strange to some. Perhaps it is not so very strange after all.If we take any one of the various qualities which we have agreed to consider highest in bird-music, we find that the wood wren compares badly with his fellow-vocalists—that, measured by this standard, he is a very inferior singer. Thus, in variety, he cannot compare with the thrush, garden-warbler,sedge-warbler, and others; in brilliance and purity of sound with the nightingale, blackcap, etc.; in strength and joyousness with the skylark; in mellowness with the blackbird; in sprightliness with the goldfinch and chaffinch; in sweetness with the wood-lark, tree-pipit, reed-warbler, the chats and wagtails, and so on to the end of all the qualities which we regard as important. What, then, is the charm of the wood wren's song? The sound is unlike any other, but that is nothing, since the same can be said of the wryneck and cuckoo and grasshopper warbler. To many persons the wood wren's note is a bird-sound and nothing more, and it may even surprise them to hear it called a song. Indeed, some ornithologists have said that it is not a song, but a call or cry, and it has also been described as "harsh."I here recall a lady who sat next to me on the coach that took me from Minehead to Lynton. The lady resided at Lynton, and finding that I was visiting the place for the first time, she proceeded to describe its attractions with fluent enthusiasm. When we arrived at the town, and were moving very slowly into it, my companion turned and examined my face, waiting to hear the expressions of rapturous admiration that wouldfall from my lips. Said I, "There is one thing you can boast of in Lynton. So far as I know, it is the only town in the country where, sitting in your own room with the windows open, you can listen to the song of the wood wren." Her face fell. She had never heard of the wood wren, and when I pointed to the tree from which the sound came and she listened and heard, she turned away, evidently too disgusted to say anything. She had been wasting her eloquence on an unworthy subject—one who was without appreciation for the sublime and beautiful in nature. The wild romantic Lynn, tumbling with noise and foam over its rough stony bed, the vast wooded hills, the piled-up black rocks (covered in places with beautiful red and blue lettered advertisements), had been passed by in silence—nothing had stirred me but the chirping of a miserable little bird, which, for all that she knew or cared, might be a sparrow! When we got down from the coach a couple of minutes later, she walked away without even saying good-bye.There is no doubt that very many persons know and care as little about bird voices as this lady; but how about the others who do know and care a good deal—what do they think and feel aboutthe song of the wood wren? I know two or three persons who are as fond of the bird as I am; and two or three recent writers on bird life have spoken of its song as if they loved it. The ornithologists have in most cases been satisfied to quote Gilbert White's description of Letter XIX.: "This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise now and then, at short intervals, shaking a little with its wings when it sings."White was a little more appreciative in the case of the willow wren when he spoke of its "joyous, easy, laughing note"; yet the willow wren has had to wait a long time to be recognised as one of our best vocalists. Some years ago it was greatly praised by John Burroughs, who came over from America to hear the British songsters, his thoughts running chiefly on the nightingale, blackcap, throstle, and blackbird; and he was astonished to find that this unfamed warbler, about which the ornithologists had said little and the poets nothing, was one of the most delightful vocalists, and had a "delicious warble." He waxed indignant at our neglect of such a singer, and cried out that it had too fine a song to please the British ear; that a louder coarser voice was needed tocome up to John Bull's standard of a good song. No one who loves a hearty laugh can feel hurt at his manner of expressing himself, so characteristic of an American. Nevertheless, the fact remains that only since Burroughs' appreciation of the British song-birds first appeared, several years ago, the willow wren, which he found languishing in obscurity, has had many to praise it. At all events, the merits of its song are now much more freely acknowledged than they were formerly.Perhaps the wood wren's turn will come by and by. He is still an obscure bird, little known, or not known, to most people: we are more influenced by what the old writers have said than we know or like to believe; our preferences have mostly been made for us. The species which they praised and made famous have kept their places in popular esteem, while other species equally charming, which they did not know or said nothing about, are still but little regarded. It is hardly to be doubted that the wood wren would have been thought more of if Willughby, the Father of British Ornithology, had known it and expressed a high opinion of its song; or that it would have had millions to admire it if Chaucer or Shakespeare had singled it out for a few words of praise.It is also probably the fact that those who are not students, or close observers of bird life, seldom know more than a very few of the most common species; and that when they hear a note that pleases them they set it down to one of the half-dozen or three or four songsters whose names they remember. I met with an amusing instance of this common mistake at a spot in the west of England, where I visited a castle on a hill, and was shown over the beautiful but steep grounds by a stout old dame, whose breath and temper were alike short. It was a bright morning in May, and the birds were in full song. As we walked through theshrubberya blackcap burst into a torrent of wild heart-enlivening melody from amidst the foliage not more than three yards away. "How well that blackcap sings!" I remarked. "That blackbird," she corrected; "yes, it sings well." She stuck to it that it was a blackbird, and to prove that I was wrong assured me that there were no blackcaps there. Finding that I refused to acknowledge myself in error, she got cross and dropped into sullen silence; but ten or fifteen minutes later she returned of her own accord to the subject. "I've been thinking, sir," she said, "that you must be right. I said there are no blackcapshere because I've been told so, but all the same I've often remarked that the blackbird has two different songs. Now I know, but I'm so sorry that I didn't know a few days sooner." I asked her why. She replied, "The other day a young American lady came to the castle and I took her over the grounds. The birds were singing the same as to-day, and the young lady said, 'Now, I want you to tell me which is the blackcap's song. Just think,' she said, 'what a distance I have come, from America! Well, when I was bidding good-bye to my friends at home I said, "Don't you envy me? I'm going to Old England to hear the blackcap's song."' Well, when I told her we had no blackcaps she was so disappointed; and yet, sir, if what you say is right, the bird was singing near us all the time!"Poor young lady from America! I should have liked to know whose written words first fired her brain with desire of the blackcap's song—a golden voice in imagination's ear, while the finest home voices were merely silvern. I think of my own case; how in boyhood this same bird first warbled to me in some lines of a poem I read; and how, long years afterwards, I first heard the real song—beautiful, but how unlike the song I had imagined!—one bright evening in early May, at Netley Abbey. But the poet's name had meanwhile slipped out of memory; nothing but a vague impression remained (and still persists) that he flourished and had great fame about the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that now his (or her) fame and works are covered with oblivion.To return to the subject of this paper: the wood wren—the secret of its charm. We see that, tried by ordinary standards, many other singers are its superiors; what, then, is the mysterious something in its music that makes it to some of us even better than the best? Speaking for myself, I should say because it is more harmonious, or in more perfect accord with the nature amid which it is heard; it is the truer woodland voice.The chaffinch as a rule sings in open woods and orchards and groves when there is light and life and movement; but sometimes in the heart of a deep wood the silence is broken by its sudden loud lyric: it is unexpected and sounds unfamiliar in such a scene; the wonderfully joyous ringing notes are like a sudden flood of sunshine in a shady place. The sound is intensely distinct and individual, in sharp contrast to the low forest tones: its effect on the ear is similar to that producedon the sight by a vivid contrast in colours, as by a splendid scarlet or shining yellow flower blooming solitary where all else is green. The effect produced by the wood wren is totally different; the strain does not contrast with, but is complementary to, the "tremulous cadence low" of inanimate nature in the high woods, of wind-swayed branches and pattering of rain and lisping and murmuring of innumerable leaves—the elemental sounds out of which it has been fashioned. In a sense it may be called a trivial and a monotonous song—the strain that is like a long tremulous cry, repeated again and again without variation; but it is really beyond criticism—one would have to begin by depreciating the music of the wind. It is a voice of the beechen woods in summer, of the far-up cloud of green, translucent leaves, with open spaces full of green shifting sunlight and shadow. Though resonant and far-reaching it does not strike you as loud, but rather as the diffused sound of the wind in the foliage concentrated and made clear—a voice that has light and shade, rising and passing like the wind, changing as it flows, and quivering like a wind-fluttered leaf. It is on account of this harmony that it is not trivial, and that the ear never grows tired of listening to it: sooner wouldit tire of the nightingale—its purest, most brilliant tone and most perfect artistry.The continuous singing of a skylark at a vast height above the green, billowy sun and shadow-swept earth is an etherealised sound which fills the blue space, fills it and falls, and is part of that visible nature above us, as if the blue sky, the floating clouds, the wind and sunshine, has something for the hearing as well as for the sight. And as the lark in its soaring song is of the sky, so the wood wren is of the wood.
There is a bird that by his coat,And by the hoarseness of his noteMight be supposed a crow.
Now the daw is capable at times of emitting both hoarse and harsh notes, and the same may perhaps be said of a majority of birds; but his usual note—the cry or caw varied and inflected a hundred ways, which we hear every day and all day long where daws abound—is neither harsh like the crow's, nor hoarse like the rook's. It is, in fact, as unlike the harsh, grating caw of the former species as the clarion call of the cock is unlike the grunting of swine. It may not be described as bell-like nor metallic, but it is loud and clear, with an engaging wildness in it, and, like metallic sounds, far-reaching; and of so gooda quality that very little more would make it ring musically.
Sometimes when I go into this ancient abbey church, or into some cathedral, and seating myself, and looking over a forest of bonnets, see a pale young curate with a black moustache, arrayed in white vestments, standing before the reading-desk, and hear him gabbling some part of the Service in a continuous buzz and rumble that roams like a gigantic blue-bottle through the vast dim interior, then I, not following him—for I do not know where he is, and cannot find out however much I should like to—am apt to remember the daws out of doors, and to think that it would be well if that young man would but climb up into the highest tower, or on to the roof, and dwell there for the space of a year listening to them; and that he would fill his mouth with polished pebbles, and medals, and coins and seals and seal-rings, and small porcelain cats and dogs, and little silver pigs, and other objects from the chatelaines of his lady admirers, and strive to imitate that clear, penetrating sound of the bird's voice, until he had mastered the rare and beautiful arts of voice production and distinct understandable speech.
To go back to Cowper—the poet who has been much in men's thoughts of late, and who appearsto us as perhaps the most modern-minded of those who ceased to live a century ago. Undoubtedly he was as bad a naturalist as any singer before or after him, and as any true poet has a perfect right to be. As bad, let us say, as Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Tennyson. He does not, it is true, confound the sparrow and hedge-sparrow like Wordsworth, nor confound the white owl with the brown owl like Tennyson, nor puzzle the ornithologist with a "sea-blue bird of March." But we must not forget that he addressed some verses to a nightingale heard on New Year's Day. It is clear that he did not know the crows well, for in a letter of May 10, 1780, to his friend Newton, he writes: "A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one of the young elm-trees, at the side of Mrs Aspray's orchard." But when he wrote those words—
Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh,Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,And only there, please highly for their sake—
words which I have suggested misled Ruskin, and have certainly misled others—he, Cowper, knew better. His real feeling, and better and wiser thought, is expressed in one of his incomparable letters (Hayley, vol. ii. p. 230)—
"My green-house is never so pleasant as whenwe are just on the point of surrendering it.... I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I could hardly have more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ears as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are delightful, at least in this country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know no beast in England whose voice I do not account as musical, save and except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a farmyard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble tothe bass of the bumble-bee, I admire all. Seriously, however, it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to men, that such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited."
Who has not felt the truth of this saying, that all natural sounds heard in their proper surroundings are pleasing; that even those which we call harsh do not distress, jarring or grating on our nerves, like artificial noises! The braying of the donkey was to Cowper the one exception in animal life; but he never heard it in its proper conditions. I have often listened to it, and have been deeply impressed, in a wild, silent country, in a place where herds of semi-wild asses roamed over the plains; and the sound at a distance had a wild expression that accorded with the scene, and owing to its much greater power effected the mind more than the trumpeting of wild swans, and shrill neighing of wild horses, and other far-reaching cries of wild animals.
About the sounds emitted by geese in a state of nature, and the effect produced on the mind, I shall have something to say in a chapter on that bird.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST
When the spring-feeling is in the blood, infecting us with vague longings for we know not what; when we are restless and seem to be waiting for some obstruction to be removed—blown away by winds, or washed away by rains—some change that will open the way to liberty and happiness,—the feeling not unfrequently takes a more or less definite form: we want to go away somewhere, to be at a distance from our fellow-beings, and nearer, if not to the sun, at all events to wild nature. At such times I think of all the places where I should like to be, and one is Savernake; and thither in two following seasons I have gone to ramble day after day, forgetting the world and myself in its endless woods.
It is not that spring is early there; on the contrary, it is actually later by many days than in the surrounding country. It is flowerless at a time when, outside the forest, on southern banks and by the hedge-side, in coppices and all shelteredspots, the firstlings of the year are seen—purple and white and yellow. The woods, which are composed almost entirely of beech and oak, are leafless. The aspect on a dull cold day is somewhat cheerless. On the other hand, there is that largeness and wildness which accord with the spring mood; and there are signs of the coming change even in the greyest weather. Standing in some wide green drive or other open space, you see all about you acres on acres, miles on miles, of majestic beeches, and their upper branches and network of terminal twigs, that look at a distance like heavy banked-up clouds, are dusky red and purple with the renewed life that is surging in them. There are jubilant cries of wild creatures that have felt the seasonal change far more keenly than we are able to feel it. Above everything, we find here that solitariness and absence of human interest now so rare in England. For albeit social creatures in the main, we are yet all of us at times hermits in heart, if not exactly wild men of the woods; and that solitude which we create by shutting ourselves from the world in a room or a house, is but a poor substitute—nay, a sham: it is to immure ourselves in a cage, a prison, which hardly serves to keep out the all-pervading atmosphereof miserable conventions, and cannot refresh and invigorate us. There are seasons and moods when even the New Forest does not seem sufficiently remote from life: in its most secluded places one is always liable to encounter a human being, an old resident, going about in the exercise of his commoner's rights; or else his ponies or cows or swine. These last, if they be not of some improved breed, may have a novel or quaint aspect, as of wild creatures, but the appearance is deceptive; as you pass they lift their long snouts from grubbing among the dead leaves to salute you with a too familiar grunt—an assurance that William Rufus is dead, and all is well; that they are domestic, and will spend their last days in a stye, and end their life respectably at the hands of the butcher.
At Savernake there is nothing so humanised as the pig, even of the old type; you may roam for long hours and see no man and no domestic animal. You have heard that this domain is the property of some person, but it seems like a fiction. The forest is nature's and yours. There you are at liberty to ramble all day unchallenged by any one; to walk, and run to warm yourself; to disturb a herd of red deer, or of fallow deer, which are morenumerous; to watch them standing still to gaze back at you, then all with one impulse move rapidly away, showing their painted tails, keeping a kind of discipline, row behind row, moving over the turf with that airy tripping or mincing gait that strikes you as quaint and somewhat bird-like. Or you may coil yourself up, adder-like, beside a thick hawthorn bush, or at the roots of a giant oak or beech, and enjoy the vernal warmth, while outside of your shelter the wind blows bleak and loud.
To lie or sit thus for an hour at a time listening to the wind is an experience worth going far to seek. It is very restorative. That is a mysterious voice which the forest has: it speaks to us, and somehow the life it expresses seems nearer, more intimate, than that of the sea. Doubtless because we are ourselves terrestrial and woodland in our origin; also because the sound is infinitely more varied as well as more human in character. There are sighings and moanings, and wails and shrieks, and wind-blown murmurings, like the distant confused talking of a vast multitude. A high wind in an extensive wood always produces this effect of numbers. The sea-like sounds and rhythmic volleyings, when the gale is at its loudest, die away,and in the succeeding lull there are only low, mysterious agitated whisperings; but they are multitudinous; the suggestion is ever of a vast concourse—crowds and congregations, tumultuous or orderly, but all swayed by one absorbing impulse, solemn or passionate. But not always moved simultaneously. Through the near whisperings a deeper, louder sound comes from a distance. It rumbles like thunder, falling and rising as it rolls onwards; it is antiphonal, but changes as it travels nearer. Then there is no longer demand and response; the smitten trees are all bent one way, and their innumerable voices are as one voice, expressing we know not what, but always something not wholly strange to us—lament, entreaty, denunciation.
Listening, thinking of nothing, simply living in the sound of the wind, that strange feeling which is unrelated to anything that concerns us, of the life and intelligence inherent in nature, grows upon the mind. I have sometimes thought that never does the world seem more alive and watchful of us than on a still, moonlight night in a solitary wood, when the dusky green foliage is silvered by the beams, and all visible objects and the white lights and black shadows in the intervening spacesseem instinct with spirit. But it is not so. If the conditions be favourable, if we go to our solitude as the crystal-gazer to his crystal, with a mind prepared, this faculty is capable of awaking and taking complete possession of us by day as well as by night.
As the trees are mostly beeches—miles upon miles of great trees, many of them hollow-trunked from age and decay—the fallen leaves are an important element in the forest scenery. They lie half a yard to a yard deep in all the deep hollows and dells and old water-worn channels, and where the ground is sheltered they cover acres of ground—millions and myriads of dead, fallen beech leaves. These, too, always seem to be alive. It is a leaf that refuses to die wholly. When separated from the tree it has, if not immortality, at all events a second, longer life. Oak and ash and chestnut leaves fade from month to month and blacken, and finally rot and mingle with the earth, while the beech leaf keeps its sharp clean edges unbroken, its hard texture and fiery colour, its buoyancy and rustling incisive sound. Swept by the autumn winds into sheltered hollows and beaten down by rains, the leaves lie mingled in one dead, sodden mass for days and weeks at a time, and appearready to mix with the soil; but frost and sun suck up the moisture and the dead come to life again. They glow like fire, and tremble at every breath. It was strange and beautiful to see them lying all around me, glowing copper and red and gold when the sun was strong on them, not dead, but sleeping like a bright-coloured serpent in the genial warmth; to see, when the wind found them, how they trembled, and moved as if awakening; and as the breath increased rose up in twos and threes and half-dozens here and there, chasing one another a little way, hissing and rustling; then all at once, struck by a violent gust, they would be up in thousands, eddying round and round in a dance, and, whirling aloft, scatter and float among the lofty branches to which they were once attached.
On a calm day, when there was no motion in the sunlit yellow leaves below and the reddish-purple cloud of twigs above, the sounds of bird-life were the chief attraction of the forest. Of these the cooing of the wood-pigeon gave me the most pleasure. Here some reader may remark that this pigeon's song is a more agreeable sound than its plain cooing note. This, indeed, is perhaps thought little of. In most biographies of the bird it is not even mentioned that he possessessuch a note. Nevertheless I prefer it to the song. The song itself—the set melody composed of half a dozen inflected notes, repeated three or four times with little or no variation—is occasionally heard in the late winter and early spring, but at this time of the year it is often too husky or croaky to be agreeable. The songster has not yet thrown off his seasonal cold; the sound might sometimes proceed from a crow suffering from a catarrh. It improves as the season advances. The song is sometimes spelt in books:
Coo-coó-roo, coó-coo-roo.
A lady friend assures me the right words of this song are:
Taketwocows, David.
She cannot, if she tries, make the bird say anything different, for these are the words she was taught to hear in the song, as a child, in Leicestershire. Of course they are uttered with a great deal of emotion in the tone, David being tearfully, almost sobbingly, begged and implored to take two cows; the emphasis is very strong on the two—it is apparently a matter of the utmost consequence that David should not take one, nor three, nor any other number of cows, but just two.
In East Anglia I have been informed that what the bird really and truly says is—
My toe bleeds, Betty.
Many as are the species capable of articulate speech, as we may see by referring to any ornithological work, there is no bird in our woods whose notes more readily lend themselves to this childish fancy than the wood-pigeon, on account of the depth and singularly human quality of its voice. The song is a passionate complaint. One can fancy the human-like feathered creature in her green bower, pleading, upbraiding, lamenting; and, listening, we will find it easy enough to put it all into plain language:
O swear not you love me, for you cannot be true,O perjured wood-pigeon! Go from me—wooSome other! Heart-broken I rueThat softness, ah me! when you cooed your false coo.Soar to your new love—the creature in blue!Who, who would have thought it of you!And perhaps you consider her beau—Oo—tiful! O you are too too cru—Bid them come shoo—oot me, do, do!Would I had given my heart to a hoo—Oo-ting wood-owl, cuckoo, woodcock, hoopoo!
One morning, at a village in Berkshire, I was walking along the road, about twenty-five yards from a cottage, when I heard, as I imagined, the familiar song of the wood-pigeon; but it soundedtoo close, for the nearest trees were fifty yards distant. Glancing up at the open window of an upper room in the cottage, I made the discovery that my supposed pigeon was a four-year-old child who had recently been chastised by his mother and sent upstairs to do penance. There he sat by the open window, his face in his hands, crying, not as if his heart would break, but seeming to take a mournful pleasure in the rhythmical sound of his own sobs and moans; they had settled into a rising and fallingboo-hoo, with regularly recurring long and short notes, agreeable to the ear, and very creditable to the little crier's musical capacity. The incident shows how much the pigeon's plaint resembles some human sounds.
The plain cooing note is so common in this order of birds that it may be regarded as the original and universal pigeon language, out of which the set songs have been developed, with, in most instances, but little change in the quality of the sound. In the multitude of species there are voices clear, resonant, thick, or husky, or guttural, hollow or booming, grating and grunting; but, however much they vary, you can generally detect thepigeonorfamilysound, which is more or less human-like. In some species the set song hasalmost superseded the plain single note, which has diminished to a mere murmur; in others, on the contrary, there is no song at all, unless the single unvaryingcoocan be called a song. In most species in the typical genus Columba the plain coo is quite distinct from the set song, but has at the same time developed into a kind of second song, the note being pleasantly modulated and repeated many times. We find this in the rock-dove: the curious guttural sounds composing its set song, whichaccompanythe love antics of the male, are not musical, while the clear inflected cooing note is agreeable to most ears. It is a pleasing morning sound of the dove-cote; but the note, to be properly appreciated, must be heard in some dimly lighted ocean-cavern in which the bird breeds in its wild state. The long-drawn, oft-repeated musical coo mingles with and is heard above the murmuring and lapping of the water beneath; the hollow chamber retains and prolongs the sound, and makes it more sonorous, and at the same time gives it something of mystery.
Of all the cooing notes of the different species I am acquainted with, that of the stock-dove, a pigeon with no set song, is undoubtedly the most attractive: next in order is that of the wood-pigeon on account of its depth and human-likecharacter. And it is far from monotonous. In this wood in March I have often kept near a pigeon for half an hour at a time hearing it uttering its cooing note, repeated half a dozen or more times, at intervals of three or four minutes; and again and again the note has changed in length and power and modulation. In the profound stillness, on a windless day, of the vast beechen woods, these sonorous notes had a singularly beautiful effect.
After spending a short time in the forest, one might easily get the idea that it is a sanctuary for all the persecuted creatures of the crow family. It is not quite that; the ravens have been destroyed here as in most places; but the other birds of that tribe are so numerous that even the most bloodthirsty keeper might be appalled at the task of destroying them. The clearance would doubtless have been effected if this noble forest had passed, as so nearly happened, out of the hands of the family that have so long possessed it: that calamity was happily averted. Not only are the rooks there in legions, having their rookeries in the park, but, throughout the forest, daws, carrion crows, jays, and magpies are abundant. The jackdaws outnumber all the other species (rooks included) put together; they literally swarm, andtheir ringing, yelping cries may be heard at all hours of the day in any part of the forest. In March, when they are nesting, their numbers are concentrated in those parts of the wood where the trees, beech and oak, are very old and have hollow trunks. In some places you will find many acres of wood where every tree is hollow and apparently inhabited. Yet there are doubtless some hollow trees into which the daw is not permitted to intrude. The wood-owl is common here, and is presumably well able to hold his castle against all aggressors. If one could but climb into the airy tower, and, sitting invisible, watch the siege and defence and the many strange incidents of the war between these feathered foes! The daw, bold yet cautious, venturing a little way into the dim interior, with shrill threats of ejectment, ruffling his grey pate and peeping down with his small, malicious, serpent-like grey eyes; the owl puffing out his tiger-coloured plumage, and lifting to the light his pale, shield-like face and luminous eyes,—would indeed be a rare spectacle; and then, what hissings, snappings, and beak-clatterings, and shrill, cat-like, and yelping cries! But, although these singular contests go on so near us, a few yards above the surface, Savernake might be in themisty mid-region of Weir, or on the slopes of Mount Yanik, for all the chance we have of witnessing them.
An experience I had one day when I was new to the forest and used occasionally to lose myself, gave me some idea of the numbers of jackdaws breeding in Savernake. During my walk I came to a spot where all round me and as far as could be seen the trees were in an advanced state of decay: not only were they hollow and rotten within, but the immense horizontal branches and portions of the trunks were covered with a thick crop of fern, which, mixed with dead grass and moss, gave the dying giants of the forest a strange, ragged and desolate appearance. Many a time looking at one of these trees I have been reminded of Holman Hunt's forlorn Scapegoat. Here the daws had their most populous settlement. As I advanced, the dead twigs and leaves crackling beneath my feet, they rose up everywhere, singly and in twos and threes and half-dozens, darting hurriedly away and disappearing among the trees before me. The alarm-note they emit at such times is like their usual yelping call subdued to a short, querulous chirp; and this note now sounded before me and on either hand, at a distance of about one hundred yards, uttered continually by so manybirds that their voices mingled into a curious sharp murmur. Tired of walking, I sat down on a root in the shelter of a large oak, and remained there perfectly motionless for about an hour. But the birds never lost their suspicion; all the time the distant subdued tempest of sharp notes went on, occasionally dying down until it nearly ceased, then suddenly rising and spreading again until I was ringed round with the sound. At length the loud, sharp invitation or order to fly was given and taken up by many birds; then, through the opening among the trees before me, I saw them rise in a dense flock and circle about at a distance: other flocks rose on the right and left hands and joined the first; and finally the whole mass come slowly overhead as if to explore; but when the foremost birds were directly over me the flock divided into two columns, which deployed to the right and left, and at a distance poured again into the trees. There could not have been fewer than two thousand birds in the flock that came over me, and they were probably all building in that part of the forest.
The daw, whether tame or distrustful of man, is always interesting. Here I was even more interested in the jays, and it was indeed chiefly for the pleasure of seeing them, when they are bestto look at, that I visited this forest. I had also formed the idea that there was no place in England where the jay could be seen to better advantage, as they are, or until recently were, exceedingly abundant at Savernake, and were not in constant fear of the keeper and his everlasting gun. Here one could witness their early spring assemblies, when the jay, beautiful at all times, is seen at his very best.
It is necessary to say here that this habit of the jay does not appear to be too well known to our ornithologists. When I stated in a small work onBritish Birdsa few years ago that jays had the custom of congregating in spring, a distinguished naturalist, who reviewed the book in one of the papers, rebuked me for so absurd a statement, and informed me that the jay is a solitary bird except at the end of summer and in the early autumn, when they are sometimes seen in families. If I had not made it a rule never to reply to a critic, I could have informed this one that I knew exactly where his knowledge of the habits of the jay was derived-that it dated back to a book published ninety-nine years ago. It was a very good book, and all it contains, some errors included, have been incorporated in most of the important ornithological works which have appeared during thenineteenth century. But though my critic thus "wrote it all by rote," according to the books, "he did not write it right." The ancient error has not, however, been repeated by all writers on the subject. Seebohm, in hisHistory of British Birds, wrote: "Sometimes, especially in Spring, fortune may favour you, and you will see a regular gathering of these noisy birds.... It is only at this time that the jay displays a social disposition; and the birds may often be heard to utter a great variety of notes, some of the modulations approaching almost to a song."
The truth of the statement I have made that most of our writers on birds have strictly followed Montague in his account of the jay's habits, unmistakably shows itself in all they say about the bird's language. Montagu wrote in his famousDictionary of Birds(1802):—
"Its common notes are various, but harsh; will sometimes in spring utter a sort of song in a soft and pleasing manner, but so low as not to be heard at any distance; and at intervals introduce the bleatings of a Lamb, mewing of a Cat, the note of a Kite or Buzzard, hooting of an Owl, and even the neighing of a Horse.
"These imitations are so exact, even in a natural wild state, that we have frequently been deceived."
This description somewhat amplified, and the wording varied to suit the writer's style, has been copied into most books on British birds—the lamb and the cat, and the kite and the horse, faithfully appearing in most cases. Yet it is certain that if all the writers had listened to the jay's vocal performances for themselves, they would have given a different account. It is not that Montagu was wrong: he went to nature for his facts and put down what he heard, or thought he heard, but the particular sounds which he describes they would not have heard.
My experience is, that the same notes and phrases are not ordinarily heard in any two localities; that the bird is able to emit a great variety of sounds—some highly musical; that he is also a great mimic in a wild irregular way, mixing borrowed notes with his own, and flinging them out anyhow, so that there is no order nor harmony, and they do not form a song.
But he also has a real song, which may be heard in any assembly of jays and from some male birds after the congregating season is over and breeding is in progress. This singing of the jay is somewhat of a puzzle, as it is not the same song in any two places, and gives one the idea that there is no inherited and no traditional song in this species,but that each bird that has a song has invented it for himself. It varies from "a sort of low song," as Montagu said,—a soft chatter and warble which one can just hear at a distance of thirty or forty yards,—to a song composed of several musical notes harmoniously arranged, which may be heard distinctly a quarter of a mile away. This set and far-reaching song is rare, but some birds have a single very powerful and musical note, or short phrase, which they repeat at regular intervals by way of song. If by following up the sound one can get near enough to the tree where the meeting is being held to see what is going on, it is most interesting to watch the vocalist, who is like a leader, and who, perched quietly, continues to repeat that one powerful, unchanging, measured sound in the midst of a continuous concert of more or less musical sounds from the other birds.
What I should very much like to know is, whether these powerful and peculiar notes, phrases, and songs of the jay, which are clearly not imitations of other species, are repeated year after year by the birds in the same localities, or are dropped for ever or forgotten at the end of each season. It is hard for me to find this out, because I do not as a rule revisit the same places in spring, and ongoing to a new or a different spot I find that the birds utter different sounds. Again, the places where jays assemble in numbers are very few and far between. It is true, as an observant gamekeeper once said to me, that if there are as many as half a dozen to a dozen jays in any wood they will contrive to hold a meeting; but when the birds are few and much persecuted, it is difficult to see and hear them at such times, and when seen and heard, no adequate idea is formed of the beauty of their displays, and the power and variety of their language, as witnessed in localities where they are numerous, and fear of the keeper's gun has not damped their mad, jubilant spirits.
In genial weather the jays' assembly may be held at any hour, but is most frequently seen during the early part of the day: on a fine warm morning in March and April one can always count on witnessing an assembly, or at all events of hearing the birds, in any wood where they are fairly common and not very shy. They are so vociferous and so conspicuous to the eye during these social intervals, and at the same time so carried away by excitement, that it is not only easy to find and see them, but possible at times to observe them very closely.
The loud rasping alarm- and angry-cry of the jay is a sound familiar to every one; the cry used by the bird to call his fellows together is somewhat different. It resembles the cry or call of the carrion crow, in localities where that bird is not persecuted, when, in the love season, he takes his stand on the top of the nesting-tree and calls with a prolonged, harsh, grating, and exceedingly powerful note, many times repeated. The jay's call has the same grating or grinding character, but is louder, sharper, more prolonged, and in a quiet atmosphere may be heard distinctly a mile away. The wood is in an uproar when the birds assemble and scream in concert while madly pursuing one another over the tall trees.
At such times the peculiar flight of the jay is best seen and is very beautiful. In almost all birds that have short, round wings, as we may see in our little wren, and in game birds, and the sparrow-hawk, and several others, the wing-beats are exceedingly rapid. This is the case with the magpie; the quickness of the wing-beats causes the black and white on the quills to mingle and appear a misty grey; but at short intervals the bird glides and the wings appear black and white again. The jay, although his wings are so shortand round, when not in a hurry progresses by means of comparatively slow, measured wing-beats, and looks as if swimming rather than flying.
It is when the gathered birds all finally settle on a tree that they are most to be admired. They will sometimes remain on the spot for half an hour or longer, displaying their graces and emitting the extraordinary medley of noises mixed with musical sounds. But they do not often sit still at such times; if there are many birds, and the excitement is great, some of them are perpetually moving, jumping and flitting from branch to branch, and springing into the air to wheel round or pass over the tree, all apparently intent on showing off their various colours—vinaceous brown, sky blue, velvet black, and glistening white—to the best advantage.
Again and again, when watching these gatherings at Savernake and at other places where jays abound, I have been reminded of the description given by Alfred Russel Wallace of the bird of paradise assemblies in the Malayan region. Our jay in some ways resembles his glorious Eastern relation; and although his lustre is so much less, he is at his very best not altogether unworthy of being called the British Bird of Paradise.
CHAPTER V
A WOOD WREN AT WELLS
East of Wells Cathedral, close to the moat surrounding the bishop's palace, there is a beautifully wooded spot, a steep slope, where the birds had their headquarters. There was much to attract them there: sheltered by the hill behind, it was a warm corner, a wooded angle, protected by high old stone walls, dear to the redstart, masses of ivy, and thickets of evergreens; while outside the walls were green meadows and running water. When going out for a walk I always passed through this wood, lingering a little in it; and when I wanted to smoke a pipe, or have a lazy hour to myself among the trees, or sitting in the sun, I almost invariably made for this favourite spot. At different hours of the day I was a visitor, and there I heard the first spring migrants on their arrival—chiff-chaff, willow wren, cuckoo, redstart, blackcap, white-throat. Then, when April was drawing to an end, I said, There are no more to come. For the wryneck, lesser white-throat, andgarden warbler had failed to appear, and the few nightingales that visit the neighbourhood had settled down in a more secluded spot a couple of miles away, where the million leaves in coppice and brake were not set a-tremble by the melodious thunder of the cathedral chimes.
Nevertheless, there was another still to come, the one I perhaps love best of all. On the last day of April I heard the song of the wood wren, and at once all the other notes ceased for a while to interest me. Even the last comer, the mellow blackcap, might have been singing at that spot since February, like the wren and hedge-sparrow, so familiar and workaday a strain did it seem to have compared with this late warbler. I was more than glad to welcome him to that particular spot, where if he chose to stay I should have him so near me.
It is well known that the wood wren can only be properly seen immediately after his arrival in this country, at the end of April or early in May, when the young foliage does not so completely hide his slight unresting form, as is the case afterwards. For he, too, is green in colour; like Wordsworth's green linnet,
A brother of the leaves he seems.
There is another reason why he can be seen so much better during the first days of his sojourn with us: he does not then keep to the higher parts of the tall trees he frequents, as his habit is later, when the air is warm and the minute winged insects on which he feeds are abundant on the upper sun-touched foliage of the high oaks and beeches. On account of that ambitious habit of the wood wren there is no bird with us so difficult to observe; you may spend hours at a spot, where his voice sounds from the trees at intervals of half a minute to a minute, without once getting a glimpse of his form. At the end of April the trees are still very thinly clad; the upper foliage is but an airy garment, a slight golden-green mist, through which the sun shines, lighting up the dim interior, and making the bed of old fallen beech-leaves look like a floor of red gold. The small-winged insects, sun-loving and sensitive to cold, then hold their revels near the surface; and the bird, too, prefers the neighbourhood of the earth. It was so in the case of the wood wren I observed at Wells, watching him on several consecutive days, sometimes for an hour or two at a stretch, and generally more than once a day. The spot where he was always to be found was quite free from underwood, andthe trees were straight and tall, most of them with slender, smooth boles. Standing there, my figure must have looked very conspicuous to all the small birds in the place; but for a time it seemed to me that the wood wren paid not the slightest attention to my presence; that as he wandered hither and thither in sunlight and shade at his own sweet will, my motionless form was no more to him than a moss-grown stump or grey upright stone. By and by it became apparent that the bird knew me to be no stump or stone, but a strange living creature whose appearance greatly interested him; for invariably, soon after I had taken up my position, his careless little flights from twig to twig and from tree to tree brought him nearer, and then nearer, and finally near me he would remain for most of the time. Sometimes he would wander for a distance of forty or fifty yards away, but before long he would wander back and be with me once more, often perching so near that the most delicate shadings of his plumage were as distinctly seen as if I had had him perched on my hand.
The human form seen in an unaccustomed place always excites a good deal of attention among the birds; it awakes their curiosity, suspicion, andalarm. The wood wren was probably curious and nothing more; his keeping near me looked strange only because he at the same time appeared so wholly absorbed in his own music. Two or three times I tried the experiment of walking to a distance of fifty or sixty yards and taking up a new position; but always after a while he would drift thither, and I would have him near me, singing and moving, as before.
I was glad of this inquisitiveness, if that was the bird's motive (that I had unconsciously fascinated him I could not believe); for of all the wood wrens I have seen this seemed the most beautiful, most graceful in his motions, and untiring in song. Doubtless this was because I saw him so closely, and for such long intervals. His fresh yellowish-green upper and white under plumage gave him a wonderfully delicate appearance, and these colours harmonised with the tender greens of the opening leaves and the pale greys and silvery whites of the slender boles.
Seebohm says of this species: "They arrive in our woods in marvellously perfect plumage. In the early morning sun they look almost as delicate a yellowish-green as the half-grown leaves amongst which they disport themselves. In thehand the delicate shading of the eye-stripe, and the margin of the feathers of the wings and tail, is exquisitely beautiful, but is almost all lost under the rude handling of the bird-skinner."
The concluding words sound almost strange; but it is a fact that this sylph-like creature is sometimes shattered with shot and its poor remains operated on by the bird-stuffer. Its beauty "in the hand" cannot compare with that exhibited when it lives and moves and sings. Its appearance during flight differs from that of other warblers on account of the greater length and sharpness of the wings. Most warblers fly and sing hurriedly; the wood wren's motions, like its song, are slower, more leisurely, and more beautiful. When moved by the singing passion it is seldom still for more than a few moments at a time, but is continually passing from branch to branch, from tree to tree, finding a fresh perch from which to deliver its song on each occasion. At such times it has the appearance of a delicately coloured miniature kestrel or hobby. Most lovely is its appearance when it begins to sing in the air, for then the long sharp wings beat time to the first clear measured notes, the prelude to the song. As a rule, however, the flight is silent, and the song begins when the newperch is reached—first the distinct notes that are like musical strokes, and fall faster and faster until they run and swell into a long passionate trill—the woodland sound which is like no other.
Charming a creature as the wood wren appears when thus viewed closely in the early spring-time, he is not my favourite among small birds because of his beauty of shape and colour and graceful motions, which are seen only for a short time, but on account of his song, which lasts until September; though I may not find it very easy to give a reason for the preference.
It comforts me a little in this inquiry to remember that Wordsworth preferred the stock-dove to the nightingale—that "creature of ebullient heart." The poet was a little shaky in his ornithology at times; but if we take it that he meant the ring-dove, his preference might still seem strange to some. Perhaps it is not so very strange after all.
If we take any one of the various qualities which we have agreed to consider highest in bird-music, we find that the wood wren compares badly with his fellow-vocalists—that, measured by this standard, he is a very inferior singer. Thus, in variety, he cannot compare with the thrush, garden-warbler,sedge-warbler, and others; in brilliance and purity of sound with the nightingale, blackcap, etc.; in strength and joyousness with the skylark; in mellowness with the blackbird; in sprightliness with the goldfinch and chaffinch; in sweetness with the wood-lark, tree-pipit, reed-warbler, the chats and wagtails, and so on to the end of all the qualities which we regard as important. What, then, is the charm of the wood wren's song? The sound is unlike any other, but that is nothing, since the same can be said of the wryneck and cuckoo and grasshopper warbler. To many persons the wood wren's note is a bird-sound and nothing more, and it may even surprise them to hear it called a song. Indeed, some ornithologists have said that it is not a song, but a call or cry, and it has also been described as "harsh."
I here recall a lady who sat next to me on the coach that took me from Minehead to Lynton. The lady resided at Lynton, and finding that I was visiting the place for the first time, she proceeded to describe its attractions with fluent enthusiasm. When we arrived at the town, and were moving very slowly into it, my companion turned and examined my face, waiting to hear the expressions of rapturous admiration that wouldfall from my lips. Said I, "There is one thing you can boast of in Lynton. So far as I know, it is the only town in the country where, sitting in your own room with the windows open, you can listen to the song of the wood wren." Her face fell. She had never heard of the wood wren, and when I pointed to the tree from which the sound came and she listened and heard, she turned away, evidently too disgusted to say anything. She had been wasting her eloquence on an unworthy subject—one who was without appreciation for the sublime and beautiful in nature. The wild romantic Lynn, tumbling with noise and foam over its rough stony bed, the vast wooded hills, the piled-up black rocks (covered in places with beautiful red and blue lettered advertisements), had been passed by in silence—nothing had stirred me but the chirping of a miserable little bird, which, for all that she knew or cared, might be a sparrow! When we got down from the coach a couple of minutes later, she walked away without even saying good-bye.
There is no doubt that very many persons know and care as little about bird voices as this lady; but how about the others who do know and care a good deal—what do they think and feel aboutthe song of the wood wren? I know two or three persons who are as fond of the bird as I am; and two or three recent writers on bird life have spoken of its song as if they loved it. The ornithologists have in most cases been satisfied to quote Gilbert White's description of Letter XIX.: "This last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a sibilous grasshopper-like noise now and then, at short intervals, shaking a little with its wings when it sings."
White was a little more appreciative in the case of the willow wren when he spoke of its "joyous, easy, laughing note"; yet the willow wren has had to wait a long time to be recognised as one of our best vocalists. Some years ago it was greatly praised by John Burroughs, who came over from America to hear the British songsters, his thoughts running chiefly on the nightingale, blackcap, throstle, and blackbird; and he was astonished to find that this unfamed warbler, about which the ornithologists had said little and the poets nothing, was one of the most delightful vocalists, and had a "delicious warble." He waxed indignant at our neglect of such a singer, and cried out that it had too fine a song to please the British ear; that a louder coarser voice was needed tocome up to John Bull's standard of a good song. No one who loves a hearty laugh can feel hurt at his manner of expressing himself, so characteristic of an American. Nevertheless, the fact remains that only since Burroughs' appreciation of the British song-birds first appeared, several years ago, the willow wren, which he found languishing in obscurity, has had many to praise it. At all events, the merits of its song are now much more freely acknowledged than they were formerly.
Perhaps the wood wren's turn will come by and by. He is still an obscure bird, little known, or not known, to most people: we are more influenced by what the old writers have said than we know or like to believe; our preferences have mostly been made for us. The species which they praised and made famous have kept their places in popular esteem, while other species equally charming, which they did not know or said nothing about, are still but little regarded. It is hardly to be doubted that the wood wren would have been thought more of if Willughby, the Father of British Ornithology, had known it and expressed a high opinion of its song; or that it would have had millions to admire it if Chaucer or Shakespeare had singled it out for a few words of praise.
It is also probably the fact that those who are not students, or close observers of bird life, seldom know more than a very few of the most common species; and that when they hear a note that pleases them they set it down to one of the half-dozen or three or four songsters whose names they remember. I met with an amusing instance of this common mistake at a spot in the west of England, where I visited a castle on a hill, and was shown over the beautiful but steep grounds by a stout old dame, whose breath and temper were alike short. It was a bright morning in May, and the birds were in full song. As we walked through theshrubberya blackcap burst into a torrent of wild heart-enlivening melody from amidst the foliage not more than three yards away. "How well that blackcap sings!" I remarked. "That blackbird," she corrected; "yes, it sings well." She stuck to it that it was a blackbird, and to prove that I was wrong assured me that there were no blackcaps there. Finding that I refused to acknowledge myself in error, she got cross and dropped into sullen silence; but ten or fifteen minutes later she returned of her own accord to the subject. "I've been thinking, sir," she said, "that you must be right. I said there are no blackcapshere because I've been told so, but all the same I've often remarked that the blackbird has two different songs. Now I know, but I'm so sorry that I didn't know a few days sooner." I asked her why. She replied, "The other day a young American lady came to the castle and I took her over the grounds. The birds were singing the same as to-day, and the young lady said, 'Now, I want you to tell me which is the blackcap's song. Just think,' she said, 'what a distance I have come, from America! Well, when I was bidding good-bye to my friends at home I said, "Don't you envy me? I'm going to Old England to hear the blackcap's song."' Well, when I told her we had no blackcaps she was so disappointed; and yet, sir, if what you say is right, the bird was singing near us all the time!"
Poor young lady from America! I should have liked to know whose written words first fired her brain with desire of the blackcap's song—a golden voice in imagination's ear, while the finest home voices were merely silvern. I think of my own case; how in boyhood this same bird first warbled to me in some lines of a poem I read; and how, long years afterwards, I first heard the real song—beautiful, but how unlike the song I had imagined!—one bright evening in early May, at Netley Abbey. But the poet's name had meanwhile slipped out of memory; nothing but a vague impression remained (and still persists) that he flourished and had great fame about the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that now his (or her) fame and works are covered with oblivion.
To return to the subject of this paper: the wood wren—the secret of its charm. We see that, tried by ordinary standards, many other singers are its superiors; what, then, is the mysterious something in its music that makes it to some of us even better than the best? Speaking for myself, I should say because it is more harmonious, or in more perfect accord with the nature amid which it is heard; it is the truer woodland voice.
The chaffinch as a rule sings in open woods and orchards and groves when there is light and life and movement; but sometimes in the heart of a deep wood the silence is broken by its sudden loud lyric: it is unexpected and sounds unfamiliar in such a scene; the wonderfully joyous ringing notes are like a sudden flood of sunshine in a shady place. The sound is intensely distinct and individual, in sharp contrast to the low forest tones: its effect on the ear is similar to that producedon the sight by a vivid contrast in colours, as by a splendid scarlet or shining yellow flower blooming solitary where all else is green. The effect produced by the wood wren is totally different; the strain does not contrast with, but is complementary to, the "tremulous cadence low" of inanimate nature in the high woods, of wind-swayed branches and pattering of rain and lisping and murmuring of innumerable leaves—the elemental sounds out of which it has been fashioned. In a sense it may be called a trivial and a monotonous song—the strain that is like a long tremulous cry, repeated again and again without variation; but it is really beyond criticism—one would have to begin by depreciating the music of the wind. It is a voice of the beechen woods in summer, of the far-up cloud of green, translucent leaves, with open spaces full of green shifting sunlight and shadow. Though resonant and far-reaching it does not strike you as loud, but rather as the diffused sound of the wind in the foliage concentrated and made clear—a voice that has light and shade, rising and passing like the wind, changing as it flows, and quivering like a wind-fluttered leaf. It is on account of this harmony that it is not trivial, and that the ear never grows tired of listening to it: sooner wouldit tire of the nightingale—its purest, most brilliant tone and most perfect artistry.
The continuous singing of a skylark at a vast height above the green, billowy sun and shadow-swept earth is an etherealised sound which fills the blue space, fills it and falls, and is part of that visible nature above us, as if the blue sky, the floating clouds, the wind and sunshine, has something for the hearing as well as for the sight. And as the lark in its soaring song is of the sky, so the wood wren is of the wood.