CHAPTER XIGEESE: AN APPRECIATION AND A MEMORYOne November evening, in the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst, I saw a flock of geese marching in a long procession, led, as their custom is, by a majestical gander; they were coming home from their feeding-ground in the forest, and when I spied them were approaching their owner's cottage. Arrived at the wooden gate of the garden in front of the cottage, the leading bird drew up square before it, and with repeated loud screams demanded admittance. Pretty soon, in response to the summons, a man came out of the cottage, walked briskly down the garden path and opened the gate, but only wide enough to put his right leg through; then, placing his foot and knee against the leading bird, he thrust him roughly back; as he did so three young geese pressed forward and were allowed to pass in; then the gate was slammed in the face of the gander and the rest of his followers, and the man went back to the cottage. The gander's indignation was fine to see, though he had mostprobably experienced the same rude treatment on many previous occasions. Drawing up to the gate again he called more loudly than before; then deliberately lifted a leg, and placing his broad webbed foot like an open hand against the gate actually tried to push it open! His strength was not sufficient; but he continued to push and to call until the man returned to open the gate and let the birds go in.It was an amusing scene, and the behaviour of the bird struck me as characteristic. It was this lofty spirit of the goose and strict adhesion to his rights, as well as his noble appearance and the stately formality and deliberation of his conduct, that caused me very long ago to respect and admire him above all our domestic birds. Doubtless from the æsthetic point of view other domesticated species are his superiors in some things: the mute swan, "floating double," graceful and majestical, with arched neck and ruffled scapulars; the oriental pea-fowl in his glittering mantle; the helmeted guinea-fowl, powdered with stars, and the red cock with his military bearing—a shining Elizabethan knight of the feathered world, singer, lover, and fighter. It is hardly to be doubted that, mentally, the goose is above all these; and to my mind his,too, is the nobler figure; but it is a very familiar figure, and we have not forgotten the reason of its presence among us. He satisfies a material want only too generously, and on this account is too much associated in the mind with mere flavours. We keep a swan or a peacock for ornament; a goose for the table—he is the Michaelmas and Christmas bird. A somewhat similar debasement has fallen on the sheep in Australia. To the man in the bush he is nothing but a tallow-elaborating organism, whose destiny it is to be cast, at maturity, into the melting vat, and whose chief use it is to lubricate the machinery of civilisation. It a little shocks, and at the same time amuses, our Colonial to find that great artists in the parent country admire this most unpoetic beast, and waste their time and talents in painting it.Some five or six years ago, in theAlpine Journal, Sir Martin Conway gave a lively and amusing account of his first meeting with A. D. M'Cormick, the artist who subsequently accompanied him to the Karakoram Himalayas. "A friend," he wrote, "came to me bringing in his pocket a crumpled-up water sketch or impression of a lot of geese. I was struck by the breadth of the treatment, and I remember saying that the man who could see suchmonumental magnificence in a flock of geese ought to be the kind of man to paint mountains, and render somewhat of their majesty."I will venture to say that he looked at the sketch or impression with the artist's clear eye, but had not previously so looked at the living creature; or had not seen it clearly, owing to the mist of images—if that be a permissible word—that floated between it and his vision—remembered flavours and fragrances, of rich meats, and of sage and onions and sweet apple sauce. When this interposing mist is not present, who can fail to admire the goose—that stately bird-shaped monument of clouded grey or crystal white marble, to be seen standing conspicuous on any village green or common in England? For albeit a conquered bird, something of the ancient wild and independent spirit survives to give him a prouder bearing than we see in his fellow feathered servants. He is the least timid of our domestic birds, yet even at a distance he regards your approach in an attitude distinctly reminiscent of the grey-lag goose, the wariest of wild fowl, stretching up his neck and standing motionless and watchful, a sentinel on duty. Seeing him thus, if you deliberately go near him he does not slink or scuttle away, as otherdomestic birds of meaner spirits do, but boldly advances to meet and challenge you. How keen his senses are, how undimmed by ages of captivity the ancient instinct of watchfulness is in him, every one must know who has slept in lonely country houses. At some late hour of the night the sleeper was suddenly awakened by the loud screaming of the geese; they had discovered the approach of some secret prowler, a fox perhaps, or a thievish tramp or gipsy, before a dog barked. In many a lonely farmhouse throughout the land you will be told that the goose is the better watch-dog.When we consider this bird purely from the æsthetic pointofview—and here I am speaking of geese generally, all of the thirty species of the sub-family Anserinæ, distributed over the cold and temperate regions of the globe—we find that several of them possess a rich and beautiful colouring, and, if not so proud, often a more graceful carriage than our domestic bird, or its original, the wild grey-lag goose. To know these birds is to greatly admire them, and we may now add that this admiration is no new thing on the earth. It is the belief of distinguished Egyptologists that a fragmentary fresco, discovered at Medum, dates back to a time at least four thousand years before the Christianera, and is probably the oldest picture in the world. It is a representation of six geese, of three different species, depicted with marvellous fidelity, and a thorough appreciation of form and colouring.Among the most distinguished in appearance and carriage of the handsome exotic species is the Magellanic goose, one of the five or six species of the Antarctic genus Chloëphaga, found in Patagonia and the Magellan Islands. One peculiarity of this bird is that the sexes differ in colouring, the male being white, with grey mottlings, whereas the prevailing colour of the female is a ruddy brown,—a fine rich colour set off with some white, grey, intense cinnamon, and beautiful black mottlings. Seen on the wing the flock presents a somewhat singular appearance, as of two distinct species associating together, as we may see when by chance gulls and rooks, or sheldrakes and black scoters, mix in one flock.This fine bird has long been introduced into this country, and as it breeds freely it promises to become quite common. I can see it any day; but these exiles, pinioned and imprisoned in parks, are not quite like the Magellanic geese I was intimate with in former years, in Patagonia and in the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, where theywintered every year in incredible numbers, and were called "bustards" by the natives. To see them again, as I have seen them, by day and all day long in their thousands, and to listen again by night to their wild cries, I would willingly give up, in exchange, all the invitations to dine which I shall receive, all the novels I shall read, all the plays I shall witness, in the next three years; and some other miserable pleasures might be thrown in. Listening to the birds when, during migration, on a still frosty night, they flew low, following the course of some river, flock succeeding flock all night long; or heard from a herdsman's hut on the pampas, when thousands of the birds had encamped for the night on the plain hard by, the effect of their many voices (like that of their appearance when seen flying) was singular, as well as beautiful, on account of the striking contrasts in the various sounds they uttered. On clear frosty nights they are most loquacious, and their voices may be heard by the hour, rising and falling, now few, and now many taking part in the endless confabulation—a talkee-talkee and concert in one; a chatter as of many magpies; the solemn deep,honk-honk, the long, grave note changing to a shuddering sound; and, most wonderful, the fine silverywhistle of the male, steady or tremulous, now long and now short, modulated a hundred ways—wilder and more beautiful than the night-cry of the widgeon, brighter than the voice of any shore bird, or any warbler, thrush or wren, or the sound of any wind instrument.It is probable that those who have never known the Magellanic goose in a state of nature are best able to appreciate its fine qualities in its present semi-domestic state in England. At all events the enthusiasm with which a Londoner spoke of this bird in my presence some time ago came to me rather as a surprise. It was at the studio in St John's Wood of our greatest animal painter, one Sunday evening, and the talk was partly about birds, when an elderly gentleman said that he was pleased to meet some one who would be able to tell him the name of a wonderful bird he had lately seen in St James's Park. His description was vague; he could not say what its colour was, nor what sort of beak it had, nor whether its feet were webbed or not; but it was a large tall bird, and there were two of them. It was the way this bird had comported itself towards him that had so taken him. As he went through the park at the side of the enclosure, he caught sight of the pair some distanceaway on the grass, and the birds, observing that he had stopped in his walk to regard them, left off feeding, or whatever they were doing, and came to him. Not to be fed—it was impossible to believe that they had any such motive; it was solely and purely a friendly feeling towards him which caused them immediately to respond to his look, and to approach him, to salute him, in their way. And when they had approached to within three or four yards of where he stood, advancing with a quiet dignity, and had then uttered a few soft low sounds, accompanied with certain graceful gestures, they turned and left him; but not abruptly, with their backs towards him—oh, no, they did nothing so common; they were not like other birds—they were perfect in everything; and, moving from him, half paused at intervals, half turning first to one side then the other, inclining their heads as they went. Here our old friend rose and paced up and down the floor, bowing to this side and that and making other suitable gestures, to try to give us some faint idea of the birds' gentle courtesy and exquisite grace. It was, he assured us, most astonishing; the birds' gestures and motions were those of a human being, but in their perfection immeasurably superior to anything of thekind to be seen in any Court in Europe or the world.The birds he had described, I told him, were no doubt Upland Geese."Geese!" he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise, and disgust. "Are you speaking seriously? Geese! Oh, no, nothing like geese—a sort of ostrich!"It was plain that he had no accurate knowledge of birds; if he had caught sight of a kingfisher or green woodpecker, he would probably have described it as a sort of peacock. Of the goose, he only knew that it is a ridiculous, awkward creature, proverbial for its stupidity, although very good to eat; and it wounded him to find that any one could think so meanly of his intelligence and taste as to imagine him capable of greatly admiring any bird called a goose, or any bird in any way related to a goose.I will now leave the subject of the beautiful antarctic goose, the "bustard" of the horsemen of the pampas, and "sort of ostrich" of our Londoner, to relate a memory of my early years, and of how I first became an admirer of the familiar domestic goose. Never since have I looked on it in such favourable conditions.Two miles from my home there stood an old mud-built house, thatched with rushes, and shaded by a few ancient half-dead trees. Here lived a very old woman with her two unmarried daughters, both withered and grey as their mother; indeed, in appearance, they were three amiable sister witches, all very very old. The high ground on which the house stood sloped down to an extensive reed- and rush-grown marsh, the source of an important stream; it was a paradise of wild fowl, swan, roseate spoonbill, herons white and herons grey, ducks of half a dozen species, snipe and painted snipe, and stilt, plover and godwit; the glossy ibis, and the great crested blue ibis with a powerful voice. All these interested, I might say fascinated, me less than the tame geese that spent most of their time in or on the borders of the marsh in the company of the wild birds. The three old women were so fond of their geese that they would not part with one for love or money; the most they would ever do would be to present an egg, in the laying season, to some visitor as a special mark of esteem.It was a grand spectacle, when the entire flock, numbering upwards of a thousand, stood up on the marsh and raised their necks on a person'sapproach. It was grand to hear them, too, when, as often happened, they all burst out in a great screaming concert. I can hear that mighty uproar now!With regard to the character of the sound: we have seen in a former chapter that the poet Cowper thought not meanly of the domestic grey goose as a vocalist, when heard on a common or even in a farmyard. But there is a vast difference in the effect produced on the mind when the sound is heard amid its natural surroundings in silent desert places. Even hearing them as I did, from a distance, on that great marsh, where they existed almost in a state of nature, the sound was not comparable to that of the perfectly wild bird in his native haunts. The cry of the wild grey-lag was described by Robert Gray in hisBirds of the West of Scotland. Of the bird's voice he writes: "My most recent experiences (August 1870) in the Outer Hebrides remind me of a curious effect which I noted in connection with the call-note of this bird in these quiet solitudes. I had reached South Uist, and taken up my quarters under the hospitable roof of Mr Birnie, at Grogarry ... and in the stillness of the Sabbath morning following my arrival was aroused from sleep by the cries of thegrey-lags as they flew past the house. Their voices, softened by distance, sounded not unpleasantly, reminding me of the clanging of church bells in the heart of a large town."It is a fact, I think, that to many minds the mere wildness represented by the voice of a great wild bird in his lonely haunts is so grateful, that the sound itself, whatever its quality may be, delights, and is more than the most beautiful music. A certain distinguished man of letters and Church dignitary was once asked, a friend tells me, why he lived away from society, buried in the loneliest village on the dreary East coast; at that spot where, standing on the flat desolate shore you look over the North Sea, and have no land between you and far Spitzbergen. He answered, that he made his home there because it was the only spot in England in which, sitting in his own room, he could listen to the cry of the pink-footed goose. Only those who have lost their souls will fail to understand.The geese I have described, belonging to the three old women, could fly remarkably well, and eventually some of them, during their flights down stream, discovered at a distance of about eight miles from home the immense, low, marshy plainbordering the sea-like Plata River. There were no houses and no people in that endless green, wet land, and they liked it so well that they visited it more and more often, in small flocks of a dozen to twenty birds, going and coming all day long, until all knew the road. It was observed that when a man on foot or on horseback appeared in sight of one of these flocks, the birds at this distance from home were as wary as really wild birds, and watched the stranger's approach in alarm, and when he was still at a considerable distance rose and flew away beyond sight.The old dames grieved at this wandering spirit in their beloved birds, and became more and more anxious for their safety. But by this time the aged mother was fading visibly into the tomb, though so slowly that long months went by while she lay on her bed, a weird-looking object—I remember her well—leaner, greyer, more ghost-like, than the silent, lean, grey heron on the marsh hard by. And at last she faded out of life, aged, it was said by her descendants, a hundred and ten years; and, after she was dead, it was found that of that great company of noble birds there remained only a small remnant of about forty, and these were probably incapable of sustained flight. The othersreturned no more; but whether they met their death from duck and swan shooters in the marshes, or had followed the great river down to the sea, forgetting their home, was never known. For about a year after they had ceased going back, small flocks were occasionally seen in the marshes, very wild and strong on the wing, but even these, too, vanished at last.It is probable that, but for powder and shot, the domestic goose of Europe, by occasionally taking to a feral life in thinly-settled countries, would ere this have become widely distributed over the earth.And one wonders if in the long centuries running to thousands of years, of tame flightless existence, the strongest impulse of the wild migrant has been wholly extinguished in the domestic goose? We regard him as a comparatively unchangeable species, and it is probable that the unexercised faculty is not dead but sleeping, and would wake again in favourable circumstances. The strength of the wild bird's passion has been aptly described by Miss Dora Sigerson in her little poem, "The Flight of the Wild Geese." The poem, oddly enough, is not about geese but about men—wild Irishmen who were called Wild Geese; but the bird's powerfulimpulse and homing faculty are employed as an illustration, and admirably described:—Flinging the salt from their wings, and despair from their heartsThey arise on the breast of the storm with a cry and are gone.When will you come home, wild geese, in your thousand strong?...Not the fierce wind can stay your return or tumultuous sea,...Only death in his reaping could makeyoureturn no more.Now arctic and antarctic geese are alike in this their devotion to their distant breeding-ground, the cradle and true home of the species or race; and I will conclude this chapter with an incident related to me many years ago by a brother who was sheep-farming in a wild and lonely district on the southern frontier of Buenos Ayres. Immense numbers of upland geese in great flocks used to spend the cold months on the plains where he had his lonely hut; and one morning in August in the early spring of that southern country, some days after all the flocks had taken their departure to the south, he was out riding, and saw at a distance before him on the plain a pair of geese. They were male and female—a white and a brown bird. Their movements attracted his attention and he rode to them. The female was walking steadilyon in a southerly direction, while the male, greatly excited, and calling loudly from time to time, walked at a distance ahead, and constantly turned back to see and call to his mate, and at intervals of a few minutes he would rise up and fly, screaming, to a distance of some hundreds of yards; then finding that he had not been followed, he would return and alight at a distance of forty or fifty yards in advance of the other bird, and begin walking on as before. The female had one wing broken, and, unable to fly, had set out on her long journey to the Magellanic Islands on her feet; and her mate, though called to by that mysterious imperative voice in his breast, yet would not forsake her; but flying a little distance to show her the way, and returning again and again, and calling to her with his wildest and most piercing cries, urged her still to spread her wings and fly with him to their distant home.And in that sad, anxious way they would journey on to the inevitable end, when a pair or family of carrion eagles would spy them from a great distance—the two travellers left far behind by their fellows, one flying, the other walking; and the first would be left to continue the journey alone.Since this appreciation was written a good many years ago I have seen much of geese, or, as it might be put, have continued my relations with them and have written about them too in myAdventures among Birds(1913). In recent years it has become a custom of mine to frequent Wells-next-the-Sea in October and November just to welcome the wild geese that come in numbers annually to winter at that favoured spot. Among the incidents related in that last book of mine about the wild geese, there were two or three about the bird's noble and dignified bearing and its extraordinary intelligence, and I wish here to return to that subject just to tell yet one more goose story: only in this instance it was about the domestic bird.It happened that among the numerous letters I received from readers ofBirds and Manon its first appearance there was one which particularly interested me, from an old gentleman, a retired schoolmaster in the cathedral city of Wells. He was a delightful letter-writer, but by-and-bye our correspondence ceased and I heard no more of him for three or four years. Then I was at Wells, spending a few days looking up and inquiring after old friends in the place, and remembering my pleasant letter-writer I went to call on him. Duringour conversation he told me that the chapter which had impressed him most in my book was the one on the goose, especially all that related to the lofty dignified bearing of the bird, its independent spirit and fearlessness of its human masters, in which it differs so greatly from all other domestic birds. He knew it well; he had been feelingly persuaded of that proud spirit in the bird, and had greatly desired to tell me of an adventure he had met with, but the incident reflected so unfavourably on himself, as a humane and fair-minded or sportsmanlike person, that he had refrained. However, now that I had come to see him he would make a clean breast of it.It happened that in January some winters ago, there was a very great fall of snow in England, especially in the south and west. The snow fell without intermission all day and all night, and on the following morning Wells appeared half buried in it. He was then living with a daughter who kept house for him in a cottage standing in its own grounds on the outskirts of the town. On attempting to leave the house he found they were shut in by the snow, which had banked itself against the walls to the height of the eaves. Half an hour's vigorous spade work enabled him to get out fromthe kitchen door into the open, and the sun in a blue sky shining on a dazzling white and silent world. But no milkman was going his rounds, and there would be no baker nor butcher nor any other tradesman to call for orders. And there were no provisions in the house! But the milk for breakfast was the first thing needed, and so with a jug in his hand he went bravely out to try and make his way to the milk shop which was not far off.A wall and hedge bounded his front garden on one side, and this was now entirely covered by an immense snowdrift, sloping up to a height of about seven feet. It was only when he paused to look at this vast snow heap in his garden that he caught sight of a goose, a very big snow-white bird without a grey spot in its plumage, standing within a few yards of him, about four feet from the ground. Its entire snowy whiteness with snow for a background had prevented him from seeing it until he looked directly at it. He stood still gazing in astonishment and admiration at this noble bird, standing so motionless with its head raised high that it was like the figure of a goose carved out of some crystalline white stone and set up at that spot on the glittering snowdrift. But it was nostatue; it had living eyes which without the least turning of the head watched him and every motion he made. Then all at once the thought came into his head that here was something, very good succulent food in fact, sent, he almost thought providentially, to provision his house; for how easy it would be for him as he passed the bird to throw himself suddenly upon and capture it! It had belonged to some one, no doubt, but that great snowstorm and the furious north-east wind had blown it far far from its native place and it was lost to its owner for ever. Practically it was now a wild bird free for him to take without any qualms and to nourish himself on its flesh while the snow siege lasted. Standing there, jug in hand, he thought it out, and then took a few steps towards the bird in order to see if there was any sign of suspicion in it; but there was none, only he could see that the goose without turning its head was all the time regarding him out of the corner of one eye. Finally he came to the conclusion that his best plan was to go for the milk and on his return to set the jug down by the gate when coming in, then to walk in a careless, unconcerned manner towards the door, taking no notice of the goose until he got abreast of it, and then turn suddenlyand hurl himself upon it. Nothing could be easier; so away he went and in about twenty minutes was back again with the milk, to find the bird in the same place standing as before motionless in the same attitude. It was not disturbed at his coming in at the gate, nor did it show the slightest disposition to move when he walked towards it in his studied careless manner. Then, when within three yards of it, came the supreme moment, and wheeling suddenly round he hurled himself with violence upon his victim, throwing out his arms to capture it, and so great was the impulse he had given himself that he was buried to the ankles in the drift. But before going into it, in that brief moment, the fraction of a second, he saw what happened; just as his hands were about to touch it the wings opened and the bird was lifted from its stand and out of his reach as if by a miracle. In the drift he was like a drowning man, swallowing snow into his lungs for water. For a few dreadful moments he thought it was all over with him; then he succeeded in struggling out and stood trembling and gasping and choking, blinded with snow. By-and-bye he recovered and had a look round, and lo! there stood his goose on the summit of the snow bank about three yards from thespot where it had been! It was standing as before, perfectly motionless, its long neck and head raised, and was still in appearance the snow-white figure of a carved bird, only it was more conspicuous and impressive now, being outlined against the blue sky, and as before it was regarding him out of the corner of one eye. He had never, he said, felt so ashamed of himself in his life! If the bird had screamed and fled from him it would not have been so bad, but there it had chosen to remain, as if despising his attempt at harming it too much even to feel resentment. A most uncanny bird! it seemed to him that it had divined his intention from the first and had been prepared for his every movement; and now it appeared to him to be saying mentally: "Have you got no more plans to capture me in your clever brain, or have you quite given it up?"Yes, he had quite, quite given it up!And then the goose, seeing there were no more plans, quietly unfolded its wings and rose from the snowdrift and flew away over the town and the cathedral away on the further side, and towards the snow-covered Mendips; he standing there watching it until it was lost to sight in the pale sky.CHAPTER XIITHE DARTFORD WARBLERHOW TO SAVE OUR RARE BIRDSThe most interesting chapter in John Burroughs'Fresh Fieldscontains an account of an anxious hurried search after a nightingale in song, at a time of the year when that "creature of ebullient heart" somewhat suddenly drops into silence. A few days were spent by the author in rushing about the country in Surrey and Hampshire, with the result that once or twice a few musical throbs of sound, a trill, a short detached phrase, were heard—just enough to convince the eager listener that here was a vocalist beautiful beyond all others, and that he had missed its music by appearing a very few days too late on the scene.During the last seven or eight years I have read this chapter several times with undiminished interest, and with a feeling of keen sympathy for the writer in his disappointment; for it is the case that I, too, all this time, have been in chaseof a small British songster—a rare elusive bird, hard to find at any time as it is to hear a nightingale pour out its full song in the last week in June. In these years I have, at every opportunity, in spring, summer, and autumn, sought for the bird in the southern half of England, chiefly in the south and south-western counties. In the Midlands, and in Devonshire, where he was formerly well known, but where the authorities say he is now extinct, I failed to find him. I found him altogether in four counties, in a few widely-separated localities; in every case in such small numbers that I was reluctantly forced to give up a long-cherished hope that this species might yet recover from the low state, with regard to numbers, in which it fingers, and be permanently preserved as a member of the British avifauna.It would indeed hardly be reasonable to entertain such a hope, when we consider that the furze wren, or Dartford warbler, as it is named in books, is a small, frail, insectivorous species, a feeble flyer that must brave the winters at home; that down to within thirty years ago it was fairly common, though local, in the south of England, and ranged as far north as the borders of Yorkshire, and that in this period it has fallen to its present state, whenbut a few pairs and small colonies, wide apart, exist in isolated patches of furze in four or five, possibly six, counties.There can be no doubt that the decline of this species, which, on account of its furze-loving habits, must always be restricted to limited areas, is directly attributable to the greed of private collectors, who are all bound to have specimens—as many as they can get—both of the bird and its nest and eggs. Its strictly local distribution made its destruction a comparatively easy task. In 1873 Gould wrote in his large work onBritish Birds: "All the commons south of London, from Blackheath and Wimbledon to the coast, were formerly tenanted by this little bird; but the increase in the number of collectors has, I fear, greatly thinned them in all the districts near the metropolis; it is still, however, very abundant in many parts of Surrey and Hampshire." It did not long continue "very abundant." Gould was shown the bird, and supplied with specimens, by a man named Smithers, a bird-stuffer of Churt, who was at that time collecting Dartford warblers and their eggs for the trade and many private persons, on the open heath and gorse-grown country that lies between Farnham and Haslemere. Gould in the work quoted,adds: "As most British collectors must now be supplied with the eggs of the furze wren, I trust Mr Smithers will be more sparing in the future." So little sparing was he, that when he died, but few birds were left for others of his detestable trade who came after him.Three or four years ago I got in conversation with a heath-cutter on Milford Common, a singular and brutal-looking fellow, of the half-Gypsy Devil's Punch-Bowl type, described so ably by Baring-Gould in hisBroom Squire. He told me that when he was a boy, about thirty-five years ago, the furze wren was common in all that part of the country, until Smithers' offer of a shilling for every clutch of eggs, had set the boys from all the villages in the district hunting for the nests. Many a shilling had he been paid for the nests he found, but in a few years the birds became rare; and he added that he had not now seen one for a very long time.In Clark's Kennedy'sBirds of Berkshire and Buckinghamshirewe get a glimpse of the furze wren collecting business at an earlier date and nearer the metropolis. In 1868 he wrote:—"The only locality in the two counties in which this species is at all numerous, is a common in the vicinity of Sunninghill, where it is found breedingevery summer, and from whence a person in the neighbourhood obtains specimens at all times of the year, with which to supply the London bird-stuffers."When the district worked by Smithers, and the neighbouring commons round Godalming, where Newman in hisLetters of Rusticussays he had seen the "tops of the furze quite alive with these birds," had been depleted, other favourite haunts of the little doomed furze-lover were visited, and for a time yielded a rich harvest. In a few years the bird was practically extirpated; in the sixties and seventies it was common, now there are many young ornithologists with us who have never seen it (in this country at all events) in a state of nature. In some cases even persons interested in bird life, some of them naturalists too, did not know what was going on in their immediate neighbourhood until after the bird was gone. I met with a case of the kind, averystrange case indeed, in the summer of 1899, at a place near the south coast where the bird was common after it had been destroyed in Surrey, but does not now exist. In my search for information I paid a visit to the octogenarian vicar of a small rustic village. He was a native of the parish, and loved his home above all places, even as White loved Selborne, and had beena clergyman in it for over sixty years; moreover he was, I was told, a keen naturalist, and though not a collector nor a writer of books, he knew every plant and every wild animal to be found in the parish. He better than another, I imagined, would be able to give me some authentic local information.I found him in his study—a tall, handsome, white-haired old man, very feeble; he rose, and supporting his steps with a long staff, led me out into the grounds and talked about nature. But his memory, like his strength, was failing; he seemed, indeed, but the ruin of a man, although still of a very noble presence. What he called the vicarage gardens, where we strolled about among the trees, was a place without walks, all overgrown with grass and wildings; for roses and dahlias he showed me fennel, goat's-beard, henbane, and common hound's tongue; and when speaking of their nature he stroked their leaves and stems caressingly. He loved these better than the gardener's blooms, and so did I; but I wanted to hear about the vanished birds of the district, particularly the furze wren, which had survived all the others that were gone.His dim eyes brightened for a moment with old pleasant memories of days spent in observing these birds; and leading me to a spot among the trees,from which there was a view of the open country beyond, he pointed to a great green down, a couple of miles away, and told me that on the other side I would come on a large patch of furze, and that by sitting quietly there for half an hour or so I might see a dozen furze wrens. Then he added: "A dozen, did I say? Why, I saw not fewer than forty or fifty flitting about the bushes the very last time I went there, and I daresay if you are patient enough you will see quite as many."I assured him that there were no furze wrens at the spot he had indicated, nor anywhere in that neighbourhood, and I ventured to add that he must be telling me of what he had witnessed a good many years ago. "No, not so many," he returned, "and I am astonished and grieved to hear that the birds are gone—four or five years, perhaps. No, it was longer ago. You are right—I think it must be at least fifteen years since I went to that spot the last time. I am not so strong as I was, and for some years have not been able to take any long walks."Fifteen years may seem but a short space of time to a man verging on ninety; in the mournful story of the extermination of rare and beautiful British birds for the cabinet it is in reality a long period. Fifteen years ago the honey buzzard was a breedingspecies in England, and had doubtless been so for thousands of years. When the price of a "British-killed" specimen rose to £25, and of a "British-taken" egg to two or three or four pounds, the bird quickly ceased to exist. Probably there is not a local ornithologist in all the land who could not say of some species that bred annually, within the limits of his own country, that it has not been extirpated within the last fifteen years.In the instance just related, when the aged vicar, sorrying at the loss of the birds, began to recall the rare pleasure it had given him to watch them disporting themselves among the furze-bushes, something of the illusion which had been in his mind imparted itself to mine, for I could see what he was mentally seeing, and the fifteen years dwindled to a very brief space of time. Like Burroughs with the nightingale, I, too, had arrived a few days too late on the scene; the "cursed collector" had been beforehand with me, as had indeed been the case on so many previous occasions with regard to other species.A short time after my interview with the aged vicar, at an inn a very few miles from the village, I met a person who interested me in an exceedingly unpleasant way. He was a big repulsive-looking man in a black greasy coat—a human animal to be avoided;but I overheard him say something about rare birds which caused me to put on a friendly air and join in the talk. He was a Kentish man who spent most of his time in driving about from village to village, and from farm to farm, in the southern counties, in search of bargains, and was prepared to buy for cash down anything he could find cheap, from an old teapot, or a print, or copper scuttle, to a horse, or cart, or pig, or a houseful of furniture. He also bought rare birds in the flesh, or stuffed, and was no doubt in league with a good many honest gamekeepers in those counties. I had heard of "travellers" sent out by the great bird stuffers to go the rounds of all the big estates in some parts of England, but this scoundrel appeared to be a traveller in the business on his own account. I asked him if he had done anything lately in Dartford warblers. He at once became confidential, and said he had done nothing but hoped shortly to do something very good indeed. The bird, he said, was supposed to be extinct in Kent, and on that account specimens obtained in that county would command a high price. Now he had but recently discovered that a few—two or three pairs—existed at one spot, and he was anxious to finish the business he had on hand so as to go there and secure them. In answerto further questions, he said that the birds were in a place where they could not very well be shot, but that made no difference; he had a simple, effective way of getting them without a gun, and he was sure that not one would escape him.On my mentioning the fact that the Kent County Council had obtained an order for an all the year round protection of this very bird, he looked at me out of the corners of his eyes and laughed, but said nothing. He took it as a rather good joke on my part.There is not the slightest doubt that our wealthy private collectors have created the class of injurious wretches to which this man belonged.• • • • •To some who have glanced at a little dusty, out of shape mummy of a bird, labelled "Dartford Warbler," in a museum, or private collection, or under a glass shade, it may seem that I speak too warmly of the pleasure which the sight of the small furze-lover can give us. They have never seen it in a state of nature, and probably never will. When I consider all these British Passeres, which, seen at their best, give most delight to the æsthetic sense—the jay, the "British Bird of Paradise," as I have ventured to call it, displaying his vari-colouredfeathers at a spring-time gathering; the yellow-green, long-winged wood wren, most aërial and delicate of the woodland warblers; the kingfisher, flashingturquoiseblue as he speeds by; the elegant fawn-coloured, black-bearded tit, clinging to the grey-green, swaying reeds, and springing from them with a bell-like note; and the rose-tinted narrow-shaped bottle-tit as he drifts by overhead in a flock; the bright, lively goldfinch scattering the silvery thistle-down on the air; the crossbill, that quaint little many-coloured parrot of the north, feeding on a pine-cone; the grey wagtail exhibiting his graceful motions; and the golden-crested wren, seen suspended motionless with swiftly vibrating wings above his mate concealed among the clustering leaves, in appearance a great green hawk-moth, his opened and flattened crest a shining, flame-coloured disc or shield on his head,—when I consider all these, and others, I find that the peculiar charm of each does not exceed in degree that of the furze wren—seen athisbest. He is of the type of the white-throat, but idealised; the familiar brown, excitable Sylvia, pretty as he is and welcome to our hedges in April, is in appearance but a rough study for the smaller, more delicately-fashioned and richly-coloured Melizophilus, or furze-lover. Onaccount of his excessive rarity he can now be seen at his best only by those who are able to spend many days in searching and in watching, who have the patience to sit motionless by the hour; and at length the little hideling, tired of concealment or overcome bycuriosity, shows himself and comes nearer and nearer, until the ruby red of the small gem-like eye may been seen without aid to the vision. A sprite-like bird in his slender exquisite shape and his beautiful fits of excitement; fantastic in his motions as he flits and flies from spray to spray, now hovering motionless in the air like the wooing gold-crest, anon dropping on a perch, to sit jerking his long tail, his crest raised, his throat swollen, chiding when he sings and singing when he chides, like a refined and lesser sedge warbler in a frenzy, his slate-black and chestnut-red plumage showing rich and dark against the pure luminous yellow of the massed furze blossoms. It is a sight of fairy-like bird life and of flower which cannot soon be forgotten. And I do not think that any man who has in him any love of nature and of the beautiful can see such a thing, and exist with its image in his mind, and not regard with an extreme bitterness of hatred those among us whose particular craze it is to "collect" such creatures, therebydepriving us and our posterity of the delight the sight of them affords.Of many curious experiences I have met in my quest of the rare little bird, or of information concerning it, I have related two or three: I have one more to give—assuredly the strangest of all. I was out for a day's ramble with the members of a Natural History Society, at a place the name of which must not be told, and was walking in advance of the others with a Mr A., the leading ornithologist of the county, one whose name is honourably known to all naturalists in the kingdom. The Dartford warbler, he said in the course of conversation, had unhappily long been extinct in the county. Now it happened that among those just behind us there was another local naturalist, also well known outside his own county—Mr B., let us call him. When I separated from my companion this gentleman came to my side, and said that he had overheard some of our talk, and he wished me to know that Mr A. was in error in saying that the Dartford warbler was extinct in the county. There was one small colony of three or four pairs to be found at a spot ten to eleven miles from where we then were; and he would be glad to take me to the place and show me the birds. The existence of this small remnant had been known forseveral years to half a dozen persons, who had jealously kept the secret;—to their great regret they had had to keep it from their best friend and chief supporter of their Society, Mr A., simply because it would not be safe with him. He was enthusiastic about the native bird life, the number of species the county could boast, etc., and sooner or later he would incautiously speak about the Dartford warbler, and the wealthy local collectors would hear of it, with the result that the birds would quickly be gathered into their cabinets.My informant went on to say that the greatest offenders were four or five gentlemen in the place who were zealous collectors. The county had obtained a stringent order, with all-the-year-round protection for its rare species. Much, too, had been done by individuals to create a public opinion favourable to bird protection, and among the educated classes there was now a strong feeling against the destruction by private collectors of all that was best worth preserving in the local wild bird life. But so far not the slightest effect had been produced in the principal offenders. They would have the rare birds, both the resident species and the occasional visitants, and paid liberally for all specimens. Bird-stuffers, gamekeepers—theirown and their neighbours'—fowlers, and all those who had a keen eye for a feathered rarity, were in their pay; and so the destruction went merrily on. The worst of it was that the authors of the evil, who were not only law-breakers themselves, but were paying others to break the law, could not be touched; no one could prosecute nor openly denounce them because of their important social position in the county.There was nothing new to me in all this: it was an old familiar story; I have given it fully, simply because it is an accurate statement of what is being done all over the country. There is not a county in the kingdom where you may not hear of important members of the community who are collectors of birds and their eggs, and law-breakers, both directly and indirectly, every day of their lives. They all take, and pay for, every rare visitant that comes in their way, and also require an unlimited supply of the rarer resident species for the purpose of exchange with other private collectors in distant counties. In this way our finest species are gradually being extirpated. Within the last few years we have seen the disappearance (as breeding species) of the ruff and reeve, marsh harrier, and honey buzzard; and the species now on the verge of extinction, which will soon follow these and others that have gonebefore, if indeed some of them have not already gone, are the sea-eagle, osprey, kite, hen harrier, Montagu's harrier, stone curlew, Kentish plover, dotterel, red-necked phalarope, roseate tern, bearded tit, grey-lag goose, and great skua. These in their turn will be followed by the chough, hobby, great black-backed gull, furze wren, crested tit, and others. These are the species which, as things are going, will absolutely and for ever disappear, as residents and breeders, from off the British Islands. Meanwhile other species that, although comparatively rare, are less local in their distribution, are being annually exterminated in some parts of the country: it is poor comfort to the bird lover in southern England to know that many species that formerly gave life and interest to the scene, and have lately been done to death there, may still be met with in the wilder districts of Scotland, or in some forest in the north of Wales. Finally, we have among our annual visitants a considerable number of species which have either bred in these islands in past times (some quite recently), or else would probably remain to breed if they were not immediately killed on arrival—bittern, little bittern, night heron, spoonbill, stork, avocet, black tern, hoopoe, golden oriole, and many others of less well-known names.This is the case, and that it is a bad one, and well-nigh hopeless, no man will deny. Nevertheless, I believe that it may be possible to find a remedy.That "destruction of beautiful things," about which Ruskin wrote despairingly, "of late ending in perfect blackness of catastrophe, and ruin of all grace and glory in the land," has fallen, and continues to fall, most heavily on the beautiful bird life of our country. But the destruction has not been unremarked and unlamented, and the existence of a strong and widespread public feeling in favour of the preservation of our wild birds has of late shown itself in many ways, especially in the unopposed legislation on the subject during the last few years, and the willingness that Government and Parliament have shown recently to consider a new Act. There is no doubt that this feeling will grow until it becomes too strong even for the selfish Philistines, who are blind to all grace and glory in nature, and incapable of seeing anything in a rare and beautiful bird but an object to be collected. Those who in the years to come will inherit the numberless useless private collections now being formed will make haste to rid themselves of such unhappy legacies, by thrusting them upon local museums, or by destroying them outright in theiranxiety to have it forgotten that one of their name had a part in the detestable business of depriving the land of these wonderful and beautiful forms of life—a life which future generations would have cherished as a dear and sacred possession.But we cannot afford to wait: we have been made too poor in species already, and are losing something further every year; we want a remedy now.So far two suggestions have been made. One is an alteration in the existing law, which will allow the infliction of far heavier fines on offenders. All those who are acquainted with collectors and their ways will at once agree that increased penalties will not meet the case; that the only effect of such an alteration in the law would be to make collectors and the persons employed by them more careful than they have yet found it necessary to be. The other suggestion vaguely put forth is that something of the nature of a private inquiry agency should be established to find out the offenders, and that they should be pilloried in the columns of some widely-circulating journal, a method which has been tried with some success in the cases of other classes of obnoxious persons. This suggestion may be dismissed at once as of no value; not one offence in a hundred would be discovered by such means, and thegreatest sinners, who are not infrequently the most intelligent men, would escape scot free.Perhaps I should have said thatthreesuggestions have been made, for there is yet another, put forward by Mr Richard Kearton in one of his late books. He is thoroughly convinced, he tells us, that the County Council orders are perfectly useless in the case of any and every rare bird which collectors covet; and on that point we are all agreed; he then says: "We should select a dozen species admitted by a committee of practical ornithologists to be in danger, and afford them personal protection during the whole of the breeding season by placing reliable watchers, night and day, upon the nesting-ground."Watchers provided and paid by individuals and associations have been in existence these many years, and this is undoubtedly the best plan in the case of all species which breed in colonies. These are mostly sea-birds—gulls, terns, cormorants, guillemots, razor-bills, etc. Our rare birds are distributed over the country, and in the case of some, if a hundred pairs of a species exist in the British Islands, a hundred or two hundred watchers would have to be engaged. But who that has any knowledge of what goes on in the collecting world does not know thatthe guarded birds would be the first to vanish? I have seen such things—pairs of rare birds breeding in private grounds, where the keepers had strict orders to watch over them, and no stranger could enter without being challenged, and in a little while they have mysteriously disappeared. The "watcher" is good enough on the exposed sea-coast or island where an eye is kept on his doings, and where the large number of birds in his charge enables him to do a little profitable stealing and still keep up an appearance of honesty. I have visited most of the watched colonies, and therefore know. The watchers, who were paid a pound a week for guarding the nests, were not chary of their hints, and I have also been told in very plain words that I could have any eggs I wanted.It is hardly necessary to say here that the proposed alteration in the law to make it protective of all species will, so far as the private collector is concerned, leave matters just as they are.There is really only one way out of the difficulty,—one remedy for an evil which grows in spite of penalties and of public opinion,—namely, a law to forbid the making of collections of British birds by private persons. If all that has been done in and out of Parliament since 1868 to preserve our wildbirds—not merely the common abundant species, which are not regarded by collectors, butallspecies—is not to be so much labour wasted, such a law must sooner or later be made. It will not be denied by any private collector, whether he clings to the old delusion that it is to the advantage of science that he should have cabinets full of "British killed" specimens or not,—it will not be denied that the drain on our wild bird life caused by collecting is a constantly increasing one, and that no fresh legislation on the lines of previous bird protection Acts can arrest or diminish that drain. Thirty years ago, when the first Act was passed, which prohibited the slaughter of sea-birds during the breeding season, the drain on the bird life which is valued by collectors was far less than it is now; not only because there are a dozen or more collectors now where there was one in the sixties, but also because the business of collecting has been developed and brought to perfection. All the localities in which the rare resident species may be looked for are known, while the collectors all over the country are in touch with each other, and have a system of exchanges as complete as it is deadly to the birds. Then there is the money element; bird-collecting is not only the hobby of hundreds of persons of moderate means andof moderate wealth, but, like horse-racing, yachting, and other expensive forms of sport, it now attracts the very wealthy, and is even a pastime of millionaires. All this is a familiar fact, and clearly shows that without such a law as I have suggested it has now become impossible to save the best of our wild bird life.The collectors will doubtless cry out that such a law would be a monstrous injustice, and an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject; that there is really no more harm in collecting birds and their eggs than in collecting old prints, Guatemalan postage stamps, samplers, and first editions of minor poets; that to compel them to give up their treasures, which have cost them infinite pains and thousands of pounds to get together, and to abandon the pursuit in which their happiness is placed, would be worse than confiscation and downright tyranny; that the private collectors cannot properly be described as law-breakers and injurious persons, since they count among their numbers hundreds of country gentlemen of position, professional men (including clergymen), noblemen, magistrates, and justices of the peace, and distinguished naturalists—all honourable men.To put in one word on this last very delicatepoint: Where, in collecting, does the honourable man draw the line, and sternly refuse to enrich his cabinet with a long-wished-for specimen of a rare British species?—a specimen "in the flesh," not only "British killed" but obtained in the county; not killed wantonly, nor stolen by some poaching rascal, but unhappily shot in mistake for something else by an ignorant young under-keeper, who, in fear of a wigging, took it secretly to a friend at a distance and gave it to him to get rid of. The story of the unfortunate killing of the rare bird varies in each case when it has to be told to one whose standard of morality is very high even with regard to his hobby. My experience is, that where there are collectors who are men of means, there you find their parasites, who know how to treat them, and who feed on their enthusiasms.In my rambles about the country during the last few years, I have neglected no opportunity of conversing with landowners and large tenants on this subject, and, with the exception of one man, all those I have spoken to agreed that owners generally—not nine in every ten, as I had put it, but ninety-nine in every hundred—would gladly welcome a law to put down the collecting of British birds by private persons. The one man who disagreed is the ownerof an immense estate, and he was the bitterest of all in denouncing the scoundrels who came to steal his birds; and if a law could be made to put an end to such practices he would, he said, be delighted; but he drew the line at forbidding a man to collect birds on his own property. "No, no!" he concluded; "thatwould be an interference with the liberty of the subject." Then it came out that he was a collector himself, and was very proud of the rare species in his collection! If I had known that before, I should not have gone out of my way to discuss the subject with him.Clearly, then, there is a very strong case for legislation. How strong the case is I am not yet able to show, my means not having enabled me to carry out an intention of discussing the subject with a much greater number of landowners, and of addressing a circular later stating the case to all the landlords and shooting-tenants in the country. That remains to be done; in the meantime this chapter will serve to bring the subject to the attention of a considerable number of persons who would prefer that our birds should be preserved rather than that they should be exterminated in the interests of a certain number of individuals whose amusement it is to collect such objects.That a law on the lines suggested will be made sooner or later is my belief: that it may come soon is my hope and prayer, lest we have to say of the Dartford warbler, and of twenty other species named in this chapter, as we have had to say of so many others that have gone
CHAPTER XI
GEESE: AN APPRECIATION AND A MEMORY
One November evening, in the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst, I saw a flock of geese marching in a long procession, led, as their custom is, by a majestical gander; they were coming home from their feeding-ground in the forest, and when I spied them were approaching their owner's cottage. Arrived at the wooden gate of the garden in front of the cottage, the leading bird drew up square before it, and with repeated loud screams demanded admittance. Pretty soon, in response to the summons, a man came out of the cottage, walked briskly down the garden path and opened the gate, but only wide enough to put his right leg through; then, placing his foot and knee against the leading bird, he thrust him roughly back; as he did so three young geese pressed forward and were allowed to pass in; then the gate was slammed in the face of the gander and the rest of his followers, and the man went back to the cottage. The gander's indignation was fine to see, though he had mostprobably experienced the same rude treatment on many previous occasions. Drawing up to the gate again he called more loudly than before; then deliberately lifted a leg, and placing his broad webbed foot like an open hand against the gate actually tried to push it open! His strength was not sufficient; but he continued to push and to call until the man returned to open the gate and let the birds go in.
It was an amusing scene, and the behaviour of the bird struck me as characteristic. It was this lofty spirit of the goose and strict adhesion to his rights, as well as his noble appearance and the stately formality and deliberation of his conduct, that caused me very long ago to respect and admire him above all our domestic birds. Doubtless from the æsthetic point of view other domesticated species are his superiors in some things: the mute swan, "floating double," graceful and majestical, with arched neck and ruffled scapulars; the oriental pea-fowl in his glittering mantle; the helmeted guinea-fowl, powdered with stars, and the red cock with his military bearing—a shining Elizabethan knight of the feathered world, singer, lover, and fighter. It is hardly to be doubted that, mentally, the goose is above all these; and to my mind his,too, is the nobler figure; but it is a very familiar figure, and we have not forgotten the reason of its presence among us. He satisfies a material want only too generously, and on this account is too much associated in the mind with mere flavours. We keep a swan or a peacock for ornament; a goose for the table—he is the Michaelmas and Christmas bird. A somewhat similar debasement has fallen on the sheep in Australia. To the man in the bush he is nothing but a tallow-elaborating organism, whose destiny it is to be cast, at maturity, into the melting vat, and whose chief use it is to lubricate the machinery of civilisation. It a little shocks, and at the same time amuses, our Colonial to find that great artists in the parent country admire this most unpoetic beast, and waste their time and talents in painting it.
Some five or six years ago, in theAlpine Journal, Sir Martin Conway gave a lively and amusing account of his first meeting with A. D. M'Cormick, the artist who subsequently accompanied him to the Karakoram Himalayas. "A friend," he wrote, "came to me bringing in his pocket a crumpled-up water sketch or impression of a lot of geese. I was struck by the breadth of the treatment, and I remember saying that the man who could see suchmonumental magnificence in a flock of geese ought to be the kind of man to paint mountains, and render somewhat of their majesty."
I will venture to say that he looked at the sketch or impression with the artist's clear eye, but had not previously so looked at the living creature; or had not seen it clearly, owing to the mist of images—if that be a permissible word—that floated between it and his vision—remembered flavours and fragrances, of rich meats, and of sage and onions and sweet apple sauce. When this interposing mist is not present, who can fail to admire the goose—that stately bird-shaped monument of clouded grey or crystal white marble, to be seen standing conspicuous on any village green or common in England? For albeit a conquered bird, something of the ancient wild and independent spirit survives to give him a prouder bearing than we see in his fellow feathered servants. He is the least timid of our domestic birds, yet even at a distance he regards your approach in an attitude distinctly reminiscent of the grey-lag goose, the wariest of wild fowl, stretching up his neck and standing motionless and watchful, a sentinel on duty. Seeing him thus, if you deliberately go near him he does not slink or scuttle away, as otherdomestic birds of meaner spirits do, but boldly advances to meet and challenge you. How keen his senses are, how undimmed by ages of captivity the ancient instinct of watchfulness is in him, every one must know who has slept in lonely country houses. At some late hour of the night the sleeper was suddenly awakened by the loud screaming of the geese; they had discovered the approach of some secret prowler, a fox perhaps, or a thievish tramp or gipsy, before a dog barked. In many a lonely farmhouse throughout the land you will be told that the goose is the better watch-dog.
When we consider this bird purely from the æsthetic pointofview—and here I am speaking of geese generally, all of the thirty species of the sub-family Anserinæ, distributed over the cold and temperate regions of the globe—we find that several of them possess a rich and beautiful colouring, and, if not so proud, often a more graceful carriage than our domestic bird, or its original, the wild grey-lag goose. To know these birds is to greatly admire them, and we may now add that this admiration is no new thing on the earth. It is the belief of distinguished Egyptologists that a fragmentary fresco, discovered at Medum, dates back to a time at least four thousand years before the Christianera, and is probably the oldest picture in the world. It is a representation of six geese, of three different species, depicted with marvellous fidelity, and a thorough appreciation of form and colouring.
Among the most distinguished in appearance and carriage of the handsome exotic species is the Magellanic goose, one of the five or six species of the Antarctic genus Chloëphaga, found in Patagonia and the Magellan Islands. One peculiarity of this bird is that the sexes differ in colouring, the male being white, with grey mottlings, whereas the prevailing colour of the female is a ruddy brown,—a fine rich colour set off with some white, grey, intense cinnamon, and beautiful black mottlings. Seen on the wing the flock presents a somewhat singular appearance, as of two distinct species associating together, as we may see when by chance gulls and rooks, or sheldrakes and black scoters, mix in one flock.
This fine bird has long been introduced into this country, and as it breeds freely it promises to become quite common. I can see it any day; but these exiles, pinioned and imprisoned in parks, are not quite like the Magellanic geese I was intimate with in former years, in Patagonia and in the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, where theywintered every year in incredible numbers, and were called "bustards" by the natives. To see them again, as I have seen them, by day and all day long in their thousands, and to listen again by night to their wild cries, I would willingly give up, in exchange, all the invitations to dine which I shall receive, all the novels I shall read, all the plays I shall witness, in the next three years; and some other miserable pleasures might be thrown in. Listening to the birds when, during migration, on a still frosty night, they flew low, following the course of some river, flock succeeding flock all night long; or heard from a herdsman's hut on the pampas, when thousands of the birds had encamped for the night on the plain hard by, the effect of their many voices (like that of their appearance when seen flying) was singular, as well as beautiful, on account of the striking contrasts in the various sounds they uttered. On clear frosty nights they are most loquacious, and their voices may be heard by the hour, rising and falling, now few, and now many taking part in the endless confabulation—a talkee-talkee and concert in one; a chatter as of many magpies; the solemn deep,honk-honk, the long, grave note changing to a shuddering sound; and, most wonderful, the fine silverywhistle of the male, steady or tremulous, now long and now short, modulated a hundred ways—wilder and more beautiful than the night-cry of the widgeon, brighter than the voice of any shore bird, or any warbler, thrush or wren, or the sound of any wind instrument.
It is probable that those who have never known the Magellanic goose in a state of nature are best able to appreciate its fine qualities in its present semi-domestic state in England. At all events the enthusiasm with which a Londoner spoke of this bird in my presence some time ago came to me rather as a surprise. It was at the studio in St John's Wood of our greatest animal painter, one Sunday evening, and the talk was partly about birds, when an elderly gentleman said that he was pleased to meet some one who would be able to tell him the name of a wonderful bird he had lately seen in St James's Park. His description was vague; he could not say what its colour was, nor what sort of beak it had, nor whether its feet were webbed or not; but it was a large tall bird, and there were two of them. It was the way this bird had comported itself towards him that had so taken him. As he went through the park at the side of the enclosure, he caught sight of the pair some distanceaway on the grass, and the birds, observing that he had stopped in his walk to regard them, left off feeding, or whatever they were doing, and came to him. Not to be fed—it was impossible to believe that they had any such motive; it was solely and purely a friendly feeling towards him which caused them immediately to respond to his look, and to approach him, to salute him, in their way. And when they had approached to within three or four yards of where he stood, advancing with a quiet dignity, and had then uttered a few soft low sounds, accompanied with certain graceful gestures, they turned and left him; but not abruptly, with their backs towards him—oh, no, they did nothing so common; they were not like other birds—they were perfect in everything; and, moving from him, half paused at intervals, half turning first to one side then the other, inclining their heads as they went. Here our old friend rose and paced up and down the floor, bowing to this side and that and making other suitable gestures, to try to give us some faint idea of the birds' gentle courtesy and exquisite grace. It was, he assured us, most astonishing; the birds' gestures and motions were those of a human being, but in their perfection immeasurably superior to anything of thekind to be seen in any Court in Europe or the world.
The birds he had described, I told him, were no doubt Upland Geese.
"Geese!" he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise, and disgust. "Are you speaking seriously? Geese! Oh, no, nothing like geese—a sort of ostrich!"
It was plain that he had no accurate knowledge of birds; if he had caught sight of a kingfisher or green woodpecker, he would probably have described it as a sort of peacock. Of the goose, he only knew that it is a ridiculous, awkward creature, proverbial for its stupidity, although very good to eat; and it wounded him to find that any one could think so meanly of his intelligence and taste as to imagine him capable of greatly admiring any bird called a goose, or any bird in any way related to a goose.
I will now leave the subject of the beautiful antarctic goose, the "bustard" of the horsemen of the pampas, and "sort of ostrich" of our Londoner, to relate a memory of my early years, and of how I first became an admirer of the familiar domestic goose. Never since have I looked on it in such favourable conditions.
Two miles from my home there stood an old mud-built house, thatched with rushes, and shaded by a few ancient half-dead trees. Here lived a very old woman with her two unmarried daughters, both withered and grey as their mother; indeed, in appearance, they were three amiable sister witches, all very very old. The high ground on which the house stood sloped down to an extensive reed- and rush-grown marsh, the source of an important stream; it was a paradise of wild fowl, swan, roseate spoonbill, herons white and herons grey, ducks of half a dozen species, snipe and painted snipe, and stilt, plover and godwit; the glossy ibis, and the great crested blue ibis with a powerful voice. All these interested, I might say fascinated, me less than the tame geese that spent most of their time in or on the borders of the marsh in the company of the wild birds. The three old women were so fond of their geese that they would not part with one for love or money; the most they would ever do would be to present an egg, in the laying season, to some visitor as a special mark of esteem.
It was a grand spectacle, when the entire flock, numbering upwards of a thousand, stood up on the marsh and raised their necks on a person'sapproach. It was grand to hear them, too, when, as often happened, they all burst out in a great screaming concert. I can hear that mighty uproar now!
With regard to the character of the sound: we have seen in a former chapter that the poet Cowper thought not meanly of the domestic grey goose as a vocalist, when heard on a common or even in a farmyard. But there is a vast difference in the effect produced on the mind when the sound is heard amid its natural surroundings in silent desert places. Even hearing them as I did, from a distance, on that great marsh, where they existed almost in a state of nature, the sound was not comparable to that of the perfectly wild bird in his native haunts. The cry of the wild grey-lag was described by Robert Gray in hisBirds of the West of Scotland. Of the bird's voice he writes: "My most recent experiences (August 1870) in the Outer Hebrides remind me of a curious effect which I noted in connection with the call-note of this bird in these quiet solitudes. I had reached South Uist, and taken up my quarters under the hospitable roof of Mr Birnie, at Grogarry ... and in the stillness of the Sabbath morning following my arrival was aroused from sleep by the cries of thegrey-lags as they flew past the house. Their voices, softened by distance, sounded not unpleasantly, reminding me of the clanging of church bells in the heart of a large town."
It is a fact, I think, that to many minds the mere wildness represented by the voice of a great wild bird in his lonely haunts is so grateful, that the sound itself, whatever its quality may be, delights, and is more than the most beautiful music. A certain distinguished man of letters and Church dignitary was once asked, a friend tells me, why he lived away from society, buried in the loneliest village on the dreary East coast; at that spot where, standing on the flat desolate shore you look over the North Sea, and have no land between you and far Spitzbergen. He answered, that he made his home there because it was the only spot in England in which, sitting in his own room, he could listen to the cry of the pink-footed goose. Only those who have lost their souls will fail to understand.
The geese I have described, belonging to the three old women, could fly remarkably well, and eventually some of them, during their flights down stream, discovered at a distance of about eight miles from home the immense, low, marshy plainbordering the sea-like Plata River. There were no houses and no people in that endless green, wet land, and they liked it so well that they visited it more and more often, in small flocks of a dozen to twenty birds, going and coming all day long, until all knew the road. It was observed that when a man on foot or on horseback appeared in sight of one of these flocks, the birds at this distance from home were as wary as really wild birds, and watched the stranger's approach in alarm, and when he was still at a considerable distance rose and flew away beyond sight.
The old dames grieved at this wandering spirit in their beloved birds, and became more and more anxious for their safety. But by this time the aged mother was fading visibly into the tomb, though so slowly that long months went by while she lay on her bed, a weird-looking object—I remember her well—leaner, greyer, more ghost-like, than the silent, lean, grey heron on the marsh hard by. And at last she faded out of life, aged, it was said by her descendants, a hundred and ten years; and, after she was dead, it was found that of that great company of noble birds there remained only a small remnant of about forty, and these were probably incapable of sustained flight. The othersreturned no more; but whether they met their death from duck and swan shooters in the marshes, or had followed the great river down to the sea, forgetting their home, was never known. For about a year after they had ceased going back, small flocks were occasionally seen in the marshes, very wild and strong on the wing, but even these, too, vanished at last.
It is probable that, but for powder and shot, the domestic goose of Europe, by occasionally taking to a feral life in thinly-settled countries, would ere this have become widely distributed over the earth.
And one wonders if in the long centuries running to thousands of years, of tame flightless existence, the strongest impulse of the wild migrant has been wholly extinguished in the domestic goose? We regard him as a comparatively unchangeable species, and it is probable that the unexercised faculty is not dead but sleeping, and would wake again in favourable circumstances. The strength of the wild bird's passion has been aptly described by Miss Dora Sigerson in her little poem, "The Flight of the Wild Geese." The poem, oddly enough, is not about geese but about men—wild Irishmen who were called Wild Geese; but the bird's powerfulimpulse and homing faculty are employed as an illustration, and admirably described:—
Flinging the salt from their wings, and despair from their heartsThey arise on the breast of the storm with a cry and are gone.When will you come home, wild geese, in your thousand strong?...Not the fierce wind can stay your return or tumultuous sea,...Only death in his reaping could makeyoureturn no more.
Now arctic and antarctic geese are alike in this their devotion to their distant breeding-ground, the cradle and true home of the species or race; and I will conclude this chapter with an incident related to me many years ago by a brother who was sheep-farming in a wild and lonely district on the southern frontier of Buenos Ayres. Immense numbers of upland geese in great flocks used to spend the cold months on the plains where he had his lonely hut; and one morning in August in the early spring of that southern country, some days after all the flocks had taken their departure to the south, he was out riding, and saw at a distance before him on the plain a pair of geese. They were male and female—a white and a brown bird. Their movements attracted his attention and he rode to them. The female was walking steadilyon in a southerly direction, while the male, greatly excited, and calling loudly from time to time, walked at a distance ahead, and constantly turned back to see and call to his mate, and at intervals of a few minutes he would rise up and fly, screaming, to a distance of some hundreds of yards; then finding that he had not been followed, he would return and alight at a distance of forty or fifty yards in advance of the other bird, and begin walking on as before. The female had one wing broken, and, unable to fly, had set out on her long journey to the Magellanic Islands on her feet; and her mate, though called to by that mysterious imperative voice in his breast, yet would not forsake her; but flying a little distance to show her the way, and returning again and again, and calling to her with his wildest and most piercing cries, urged her still to spread her wings and fly with him to their distant home.
And in that sad, anxious way they would journey on to the inevitable end, when a pair or family of carrion eagles would spy them from a great distance—the two travellers left far behind by their fellows, one flying, the other walking; and the first would be left to continue the journey alone.
Since this appreciation was written a good many years ago I have seen much of geese, or, as it might be put, have continued my relations with them and have written about them too in myAdventures among Birds(1913). In recent years it has become a custom of mine to frequent Wells-next-the-Sea in October and November just to welcome the wild geese that come in numbers annually to winter at that favoured spot. Among the incidents related in that last book of mine about the wild geese, there were two or three about the bird's noble and dignified bearing and its extraordinary intelligence, and I wish here to return to that subject just to tell yet one more goose story: only in this instance it was about the domestic bird.
It happened that among the numerous letters I received from readers ofBirds and Manon its first appearance there was one which particularly interested me, from an old gentleman, a retired schoolmaster in the cathedral city of Wells. He was a delightful letter-writer, but by-and-bye our correspondence ceased and I heard no more of him for three or four years. Then I was at Wells, spending a few days looking up and inquiring after old friends in the place, and remembering my pleasant letter-writer I went to call on him. Duringour conversation he told me that the chapter which had impressed him most in my book was the one on the goose, especially all that related to the lofty dignified bearing of the bird, its independent spirit and fearlessness of its human masters, in which it differs so greatly from all other domestic birds. He knew it well; he had been feelingly persuaded of that proud spirit in the bird, and had greatly desired to tell me of an adventure he had met with, but the incident reflected so unfavourably on himself, as a humane and fair-minded or sportsmanlike person, that he had refrained. However, now that I had come to see him he would make a clean breast of it.
It happened that in January some winters ago, there was a very great fall of snow in England, especially in the south and west. The snow fell without intermission all day and all night, and on the following morning Wells appeared half buried in it. He was then living with a daughter who kept house for him in a cottage standing in its own grounds on the outskirts of the town. On attempting to leave the house he found they were shut in by the snow, which had banked itself against the walls to the height of the eaves. Half an hour's vigorous spade work enabled him to get out fromthe kitchen door into the open, and the sun in a blue sky shining on a dazzling white and silent world. But no milkman was going his rounds, and there would be no baker nor butcher nor any other tradesman to call for orders. And there were no provisions in the house! But the milk for breakfast was the first thing needed, and so with a jug in his hand he went bravely out to try and make his way to the milk shop which was not far off.
A wall and hedge bounded his front garden on one side, and this was now entirely covered by an immense snowdrift, sloping up to a height of about seven feet. It was only when he paused to look at this vast snow heap in his garden that he caught sight of a goose, a very big snow-white bird without a grey spot in its plumage, standing within a few yards of him, about four feet from the ground. Its entire snowy whiteness with snow for a background had prevented him from seeing it until he looked directly at it. He stood still gazing in astonishment and admiration at this noble bird, standing so motionless with its head raised high that it was like the figure of a goose carved out of some crystalline white stone and set up at that spot on the glittering snowdrift. But it was nostatue; it had living eyes which without the least turning of the head watched him and every motion he made. Then all at once the thought came into his head that here was something, very good succulent food in fact, sent, he almost thought providentially, to provision his house; for how easy it would be for him as he passed the bird to throw himself suddenly upon and capture it! It had belonged to some one, no doubt, but that great snowstorm and the furious north-east wind had blown it far far from its native place and it was lost to its owner for ever. Practically it was now a wild bird free for him to take without any qualms and to nourish himself on its flesh while the snow siege lasted. Standing there, jug in hand, he thought it out, and then took a few steps towards the bird in order to see if there was any sign of suspicion in it; but there was none, only he could see that the goose without turning its head was all the time regarding him out of the corner of one eye. Finally he came to the conclusion that his best plan was to go for the milk and on his return to set the jug down by the gate when coming in, then to walk in a careless, unconcerned manner towards the door, taking no notice of the goose until he got abreast of it, and then turn suddenlyand hurl himself upon it. Nothing could be easier; so away he went and in about twenty minutes was back again with the milk, to find the bird in the same place standing as before motionless in the same attitude. It was not disturbed at his coming in at the gate, nor did it show the slightest disposition to move when he walked towards it in his studied careless manner. Then, when within three yards of it, came the supreme moment, and wheeling suddenly round he hurled himself with violence upon his victim, throwing out his arms to capture it, and so great was the impulse he had given himself that he was buried to the ankles in the drift. But before going into it, in that brief moment, the fraction of a second, he saw what happened; just as his hands were about to touch it the wings opened and the bird was lifted from its stand and out of his reach as if by a miracle. In the drift he was like a drowning man, swallowing snow into his lungs for water. For a few dreadful moments he thought it was all over with him; then he succeeded in struggling out and stood trembling and gasping and choking, blinded with snow. By-and-bye he recovered and had a look round, and lo! there stood his goose on the summit of the snow bank about three yards from thespot where it had been! It was standing as before, perfectly motionless, its long neck and head raised, and was still in appearance the snow-white figure of a carved bird, only it was more conspicuous and impressive now, being outlined against the blue sky, and as before it was regarding him out of the corner of one eye. He had never, he said, felt so ashamed of himself in his life! If the bird had screamed and fled from him it would not have been so bad, but there it had chosen to remain, as if despising his attempt at harming it too much even to feel resentment. A most uncanny bird! it seemed to him that it had divined his intention from the first and had been prepared for his every movement; and now it appeared to him to be saying mentally: "Have you got no more plans to capture me in your clever brain, or have you quite given it up?"
Yes, he had quite, quite given it up!
And then the goose, seeing there were no more plans, quietly unfolded its wings and rose from the snowdrift and flew away over the town and the cathedral away on the further side, and towards the snow-covered Mendips; he standing there watching it until it was lost to sight in the pale sky.
CHAPTER XII
THE DARTFORD WARBLER
HOW TO SAVE OUR RARE BIRDS
The most interesting chapter in John Burroughs'Fresh Fieldscontains an account of an anxious hurried search after a nightingale in song, at a time of the year when that "creature of ebullient heart" somewhat suddenly drops into silence. A few days were spent by the author in rushing about the country in Surrey and Hampshire, with the result that once or twice a few musical throbs of sound, a trill, a short detached phrase, were heard—just enough to convince the eager listener that here was a vocalist beautiful beyond all others, and that he had missed its music by appearing a very few days too late on the scene.
During the last seven or eight years I have read this chapter several times with undiminished interest, and with a feeling of keen sympathy for the writer in his disappointment; for it is the case that I, too, all this time, have been in chaseof a small British songster—a rare elusive bird, hard to find at any time as it is to hear a nightingale pour out its full song in the last week in June. In these years I have, at every opportunity, in spring, summer, and autumn, sought for the bird in the southern half of England, chiefly in the south and south-western counties. In the Midlands, and in Devonshire, where he was formerly well known, but where the authorities say he is now extinct, I failed to find him. I found him altogether in four counties, in a few widely-separated localities; in every case in such small numbers that I was reluctantly forced to give up a long-cherished hope that this species might yet recover from the low state, with regard to numbers, in which it fingers, and be permanently preserved as a member of the British avifauna.
It would indeed hardly be reasonable to entertain such a hope, when we consider that the furze wren, or Dartford warbler, as it is named in books, is a small, frail, insectivorous species, a feeble flyer that must brave the winters at home; that down to within thirty years ago it was fairly common, though local, in the south of England, and ranged as far north as the borders of Yorkshire, and that in this period it has fallen to its present state, whenbut a few pairs and small colonies, wide apart, exist in isolated patches of furze in four or five, possibly six, counties.
There can be no doubt that the decline of this species, which, on account of its furze-loving habits, must always be restricted to limited areas, is directly attributable to the greed of private collectors, who are all bound to have specimens—as many as they can get—both of the bird and its nest and eggs. Its strictly local distribution made its destruction a comparatively easy task. In 1873 Gould wrote in his large work onBritish Birds: "All the commons south of London, from Blackheath and Wimbledon to the coast, were formerly tenanted by this little bird; but the increase in the number of collectors has, I fear, greatly thinned them in all the districts near the metropolis; it is still, however, very abundant in many parts of Surrey and Hampshire." It did not long continue "very abundant." Gould was shown the bird, and supplied with specimens, by a man named Smithers, a bird-stuffer of Churt, who was at that time collecting Dartford warblers and their eggs for the trade and many private persons, on the open heath and gorse-grown country that lies between Farnham and Haslemere. Gould in the work quoted,adds: "As most British collectors must now be supplied with the eggs of the furze wren, I trust Mr Smithers will be more sparing in the future." So little sparing was he, that when he died, but few birds were left for others of his detestable trade who came after him.
Three or four years ago I got in conversation with a heath-cutter on Milford Common, a singular and brutal-looking fellow, of the half-Gypsy Devil's Punch-Bowl type, described so ably by Baring-Gould in hisBroom Squire. He told me that when he was a boy, about thirty-five years ago, the furze wren was common in all that part of the country, until Smithers' offer of a shilling for every clutch of eggs, had set the boys from all the villages in the district hunting for the nests. Many a shilling had he been paid for the nests he found, but in a few years the birds became rare; and he added that he had not now seen one for a very long time.
In Clark's Kennedy'sBirds of Berkshire and Buckinghamshirewe get a glimpse of the furze wren collecting business at an earlier date and nearer the metropolis. In 1868 he wrote:—"The only locality in the two counties in which this species is at all numerous, is a common in the vicinity of Sunninghill, where it is found breedingevery summer, and from whence a person in the neighbourhood obtains specimens at all times of the year, with which to supply the London bird-stuffers."
When the district worked by Smithers, and the neighbouring commons round Godalming, where Newman in hisLetters of Rusticussays he had seen the "tops of the furze quite alive with these birds," had been depleted, other favourite haunts of the little doomed furze-lover were visited, and for a time yielded a rich harvest. In a few years the bird was practically extirpated; in the sixties and seventies it was common, now there are many young ornithologists with us who have never seen it (in this country at all events) in a state of nature. In some cases even persons interested in bird life, some of them naturalists too, did not know what was going on in their immediate neighbourhood until after the bird was gone. I met with a case of the kind, averystrange case indeed, in the summer of 1899, at a place near the south coast where the bird was common after it had been destroyed in Surrey, but does not now exist. In my search for information I paid a visit to the octogenarian vicar of a small rustic village. He was a native of the parish, and loved his home above all places, even as White loved Selborne, and had beena clergyman in it for over sixty years; moreover he was, I was told, a keen naturalist, and though not a collector nor a writer of books, he knew every plant and every wild animal to be found in the parish. He better than another, I imagined, would be able to give me some authentic local information.
I found him in his study—a tall, handsome, white-haired old man, very feeble; he rose, and supporting his steps with a long staff, led me out into the grounds and talked about nature. But his memory, like his strength, was failing; he seemed, indeed, but the ruin of a man, although still of a very noble presence. What he called the vicarage gardens, where we strolled about among the trees, was a place without walks, all overgrown with grass and wildings; for roses and dahlias he showed me fennel, goat's-beard, henbane, and common hound's tongue; and when speaking of their nature he stroked their leaves and stems caressingly. He loved these better than the gardener's blooms, and so did I; but I wanted to hear about the vanished birds of the district, particularly the furze wren, which had survived all the others that were gone.
His dim eyes brightened for a moment with old pleasant memories of days spent in observing these birds; and leading me to a spot among the trees,from which there was a view of the open country beyond, he pointed to a great green down, a couple of miles away, and told me that on the other side I would come on a large patch of furze, and that by sitting quietly there for half an hour or so I might see a dozen furze wrens. Then he added: "A dozen, did I say? Why, I saw not fewer than forty or fifty flitting about the bushes the very last time I went there, and I daresay if you are patient enough you will see quite as many."
I assured him that there were no furze wrens at the spot he had indicated, nor anywhere in that neighbourhood, and I ventured to add that he must be telling me of what he had witnessed a good many years ago. "No, not so many," he returned, "and I am astonished and grieved to hear that the birds are gone—four or five years, perhaps. No, it was longer ago. You are right—I think it must be at least fifteen years since I went to that spot the last time. I am not so strong as I was, and for some years have not been able to take any long walks."
Fifteen years may seem but a short space of time to a man verging on ninety; in the mournful story of the extermination of rare and beautiful British birds for the cabinet it is in reality a long period. Fifteen years ago the honey buzzard was a breedingspecies in England, and had doubtless been so for thousands of years. When the price of a "British-killed" specimen rose to £25, and of a "British-taken" egg to two or three or four pounds, the bird quickly ceased to exist. Probably there is not a local ornithologist in all the land who could not say of some species that bred annually, within the limits of his own country, that it has not been extirpated within the last fifteen years.
In the instance just related, when the aged vicar, sorrying at the loss of the birds, began to recall the rare pleasure it had given him to watch them disporting themselves among the furze-bushes, something of the illusion which had been in his mind imparted itself to mine, for I could see what he was mentally seeing, and the fifteen years dwindled to a very brief space of time. Like Burroughs with the nightingale, I, too, had arrived a few days too late on the scene; the "cursed collector" had been beforehand with me, as had indeed been the case on so many previous occasions with regard to other species.
A short time after my interview with the aged vicar, at an inn a very few miles from the village, I met a person who interested me in an exceedingly unpleasant way. He was a big repulsive-looking man in a black greasy coat—a human animal to be avoided;but I overheard him say something about rare birds which caused me to put on a friendly air and join in the talk. He was a Kentish man who spent most of his time in driving about from village to village, and from farm to farm, in the southern counties, in search of bargains, and was prepared to buy for cash down anything he could find cheap, from an old teapot, or a print, or copper scuttle, to a horse, or cart, or pig, or a houseful of furniture. He also bought rare birds in the flesh, or stuffed, and was no doubt in league with a good many honest gamekeepers in those counties. I had heard of "travellers" sent out by the great bird stuffers to go the rounds of all the big estates in some parts of England, but this scoundrel appeared to be a traveller in the business on his own account. I asked him if he had done anything lately in Dartford warblers. He at once became confidential, and said he had done nothing but hoped shortly to do something very good indeed. The bird, he said, was supposed to be extinct in Kent, and on that account specimens obtained in that county would command a high price. Now he had but recently discovered that a few—two or three pairs—existed at one spot, and he was anxious to finish the business he had on hand so as to go there and secure them. In answerto further questions, he said that the birds were in a place where they could not very well be shot, but that made no difference; he had a simple, effective way of getting them without a gun, and he was sure that not one would escape him.
On my mentioning the fact that the Kent County Council had obtained an order for an all the year round protection of this very bird, he looked at me out of the corners of his eyes and laughed, but said nothing. He took it as a rather good joke on my part.
There is not the slightest doubt that our wealthy private collectors have created the class of injurious wretches to which this man belonged.
• • • • •
To some who have glanced at a little dusty, out of shape mummy of a bird, labelled "Dartford Warbler," in a museum, or private collection, or under a glass shade, it may seem that I speak too warmly of the pleasure which the sight of the small furze-lover can give us. They have never seen it in a state of nature, and probably never will. When I consider all these British Passeres, which, seen at their best, give most delight to the æsthetic sense—the jay, the "British Bird of Paradise," as I have ventured to call it, displaying his vari-colouredfeathers at a spring-time gathering; the yellow-green, long-winged wood wren, most aërial and delicate of the woodland warblers; the kingfisher, flashingturquoiseblue as he speeds by; the elegant fawn-coloured, black-bearded tit, clinging to the grey-green, swaying reeds, and springing from them with a bell-like note; and the rose-tinted narrow-shaped bottle-tit as he drifts by overhead in a flock; the bright, lively goldfinch scattering the silvery thistle-down on the air; the crossbill, that quaint little many-coloured parrot of the north, feeding on a pine-cone; the grey wagtail exhibiting his graceful motions; and the golden-crested wren, seen suspended motionless with swiftly vibrating wings above his mate concealed among the clustering leaves, in appearance a great green hawk-moth, his opened and flattened crest a shining, flame-coloured disc or shield on his head,—when I consider all these, and others, I find that the peculiar charm of each does not exceed in degree that of the furze wren—seen athisbest. He is of the type of the white-throat, but idealised; the familiar brown, excitable Sylvia, pretty as he is and welcome to our hedges in April, is in appearance but a rough study for the smaller, more delicately-fashioned and richly-coloured Melizophilus, or furze-lover. Onaccount of his excessive rarity he can now be seen at his best only by those who are able to spend many days in searching and in watching, who have the patience to sit motionless by the hour; and at length the little hideling, tired of concealment or overcome bycuriosity, shows himself and comes nearer and nearer, until the ruby red of the small gem-like eye may been seen without aid to the vision. A sprite-like bird in his slender exquisite shape and his beautiful fits of excitement; fantastic in his motions as he flits and flies from spray to spray, now hovering motionless in the air like the wooing gold-crest, anon dropping on a perch, to sit jerking his long tail, his crest raised, his throat swollen, chiding when he sings and singing when he chides, like a refined and lesser sedge warbler in a frenzy, his slate-black and chestnut-red plumage showing rich and dark against the pure luminous yellow of the massed furze blossoms. It is a sight of fairy-like bird life and of flower which cannot soon be forgotten. And I do not think that any man who has in him any love of nature and of the beautiful can see such a thing, and exist with its image in his mind, and not regard with an extreme bitterness of hatred those among us whose particular craze it is to "collect" such creatures, therebydepriving us and our posterity of the delight the sight of them affords.
Of many curious experiences I have met in my quest of the rare little bird, or of information concerning it, I have related two or three: I have one more to give—assuredly the strangest of all. I was out for a day's ramble with the members of a Natural History Society, at a place the name of which must not be told, and was walking in advance of the others with a Mr A., the leading ornithologist of the county, one whose name is honourably known to all naturalists in the kingdom. The Dartford warbler, he said in the course of conversation, had unhappily long been extinct in the county. Now it happened that among those just behind us there was another local naturalist, also well known outside his own county—Mr B., let us call him. When I separated from my companion this gentleman came to my side, and said that he had overheard some of our talk, and he wished me to know that Mr A. was in error in saying that the Dartford warbler was extinct in the county. There was one small colony of three or four pairs to be found at a spot ten to eleven miles from where we then were; and he would be glad to take me to the place and show me the birds. The existence of this small remnant had been known forseveral years to half a dozen persons, who had jealously kept the secret;—to their great regret they had had to keep it from their best friend and chief supporter of their Society, Mr A., simply because it would not be safe with him. He was enthusiastic about the native bird life, the number of species the county could boast, etc., and sooner or later he would incautiously speak about the Dartford warbler, and the wealthy local collectors would hear of it, with the result that the birds would quickly be gathered into their cabinets.
My informant went on to say that the greatest offenders were four or five gentlemen in the place who were zealous collectors. The county had obtained a stringent order, with all-the-year-round protection for its rare species. Much, too, had been done by individuals to create a public opinion favourable to bird protection, and among the educated classes there was now a strong feeling against the destruction by private collectors of all that was best worth preserving in the local wild bird life. But so far not the slightest effect had been produced in the principal offenders. They would have the rare birds, both the resident species and the occasional visitants, and paid liberally for all specimens. Bird-stuffers, gamekeepers—theirown and their neighbours'—fowlers, and all those who had a keen eye for a feathered rarity, were in their pay; and so the destruction went merrily on. The worst of it was that the authors of the evil, who were not only law-breakers themselves, but were paying others to break the law, could not be touched; no one could prosecute nor openly denounce them because of their important social position in the county.
There was nothing new to me in all this: it was an old familiar story; I have given it fully, simply because it is an accurate statement of what is being done all over the country. There is not a county in the kingdom where you may not hear of important members of the community who are collectors of birds and their eggs, and law-breakers, both directly and indirectly, every day of their lives. They all take, and pay for, every rare visitant that comes in their way, and also require an unlimited supply of the rarer resident species for the purpose of exchange with other private collectors in distant counties. In this way our finest species are gradually being extirpated. Within the last few years we have seen the disappearance (as breeding species) of the ruff and reeve, marsh harrier, and honey buzzard; and the species now on the verge of extinction, which will soon follow these and others that have gonebefore, if indeed some of them have not already gone, are the sea-eagle, osprey, kite, hen harrier, Montagu's harrier, stone curlew, Kentish plover, dotterel, red-necked phalarope, roseate tern, bearded tit, grey-lag goose, and great skua. These in their turn will be followed by the chough, hobby, great black-backed gull, furze wren, crested tit, and others. These are the species which, as things are going, will absolutely and for ever disappear, as residents and breeders, from off the British Islands. Meanwhile other species that, although comparatively rare, are less local in their distribution, are being annually exterminated in some parts of the country: it is poor comfort to the bird lover in southern England to know that many species that formerly gave life and interest to the scene, and have lately been done to death there, may still be met with in the wilder districts of Scotland, or in some forest in the north of Wales. Finally, we have among our annual visitants a considerable number of species which have either bred in these islands in past times (some quite recently), or else would probably remain to breed if they were not immediately killed on arrival—bittern, little bittern, night heron, spoonbill, stork, avocet, black tern, hoopoe, golden oriole, and many others of less well-known names.
This is the case, and that it is a bad one, and well-nigh hopeless, no man will deny. Nevertheless, I believe that it may be possible to find a remedy.
That "destruction of beautiful things," about which Ruskin wrote despairingly, "of late ending in perfect blackness of catastrophe, and ruin of all grace and glory in the land," has fallen, and continues to fall, most heavily on the beautiful bird life of our country. But the destruction has not been unremarked and unlamented, and the existence of a strong and widespread public feeling in favour of the preservation of our wild birds has of late shown itself in many ways, especially in the unopposed legislation on the subject during the last few years, and the willingness that Government and Parliament have shown recently to consider a new Act. There is no doubt that this feeling will grow until it becomes too strong even for the selfish Philistines, who are blind to all grace and glory in nature, and incapable of seeing anything in a rare and beautiful bird but an object to be collected. Those who in the years to come will inherit the numberless useless private collections now being formed will make haste to rid themselves of such unhappy legacies, by thrusting them upon local museums, or by destroying them outright in theiranxiety to have it forgotten that one of their name had a part in the detestable business of depriving the land of these wonderful and beautiful forms of life—a life which future generations would have cherished as a dear and sacred possession.
But we cannot afford to wait: we have been made too poor in species already, and are losing something further every year; we want a remedy now.
So far two suggestions have been made. One is an alteration in the existing law, which will allow the infliction of far heavier fines on offenders. All those who are acquainted with collectors and their ways will at once agree that increased penalties will not meet the case; that the only effect of such an alteration in the law would be to make collectors and the persons employed by them more careful than they have yet found it necessary to be. The other suggestion vaguely put forth is that something of the nature of a private inquiry agency should be established to find out the offenders, and that they should be pilloried in the columns of some widely-circulating journal, a method which has been tried with some success in the cases of other classes of obnoxious persons. This suggestion may be dismissed at once as of no value; not one offence in a hundred would be discovered by such means, and thegreatest sinners, who are not infrequently the most intelligent men, would escape scot free.
Perhaps I should have said thatthreesuggestions have been made, for there is yet another, put forward by Mr Richard Kearton in one of his late books. He is thoroughly convinced, he tells us, that the County Council orders are perfectly useless in the case of any and every rare bird which collectors covet; and on that point we are all agreed; he then says: "We should select a dozen species admitted by a committee of practical ornithologists to be in danger, and afford them personal protection during the whole of the breeding season by placing reliable watchers, night and day, upon the nesting-ground."
Watchers provided and paid by individuals and associations have been in existence these many years, and this is undoubtedly the best plan in the case of all species which breed in colonies. These are mostly sea-birds—gulls, terns, cormorants, guillemots, razor-bills, etc. Our rare birds are distributed over the country, and in the case of some, if a hundred pairs of a species exist in the British Islands, a hundred or two hundred watchers would have to be engaged. But who that has any knowledge of what goes on in the collecting world does not know thatthe guarded birds would be the first to vanish? I have seen such things—pairs of rare birds breeding in private grounds, where the keepers had strict orders to watch over them, and no stranger could enter without being challenged, and in a little while they have mysteriously disappeared. The "watcher" is good enough on the exposed sea-coast or island where an eye is kept on his doings, and where the large number of birds in his charge enables him to do a little profitable stealing and still keep up an appearance of honesty. I have visited most of the watched colonies, and therefore know. The watchers, who were paid a pound a week for guarding the nests, were not chary of their hints, and I have also been told in very plain words that I could have any eggs I wanted.
It is hardly necessary to say here that the proposed alteration in the law to make it protective of all species will, so far as the private collector is concerned, leave matters just as they are.
There is really only one way out of the difficulty,—one remedy for an evil which grows in spite of penalties and of public opinion,—namely, a law to forbid the making of collections of British birds by private persons. If all that has been done in and out of Parliament since 1868 to preserve our wildbirds—not merely the common abundant species, which are not regarded by collectors, butallspecies—is not to be so much labour wasted, such a law must sooner or later be made. It will not be denied by any private collector, whether he clings to the old delusion that it is to the advantage of science that he should have cabinets full of "British killed" specimens or not,—it will not be denied that the drain on our wild bird life caused by collecting is a constantly increasing one, and that no fresh legislation on the lines of previous bird protection Acts can arrest or diminish that drain. Thirty years ago, when the first Act was passed, which prohibited the slaughter of sea-birds during the breeding season, the drain on the bird life which is valued by collectors was far less than it is now; not only because there are a dozen or more collectors now where there was one in the sixties, but also because the business of collecting has been developed and brought to perfection. All the localities in which the rare resident species may be looked for are known, while the collectors all over the country are in touch with each other, and have a system of exchanges as complete as it is deadly to the birds. Then there is the money element; bird-collecting is not only the hobby of hundreds of persons of moderate means andof moderate wealth, but, like horse-racing, yachting, and other expensive forms of sport, it now attracts the very wealthy, and is even a pastime of millionaires. All this is a familiar fact, and clearly shows that without such a law as I have suggested it has now become impossible to save the best of our wild bird life.
The collectors will doubtless cry out that such a law would be a monstrous injustice, and an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject; that there is really no more harm in collecting birds and their eggs than in collecting old prints, Guatemalan postage stamps, samplers, and first editions of minor poets; that to compel them to give up their treasures, which have cost them infinite pains and thousands of pounds to get together, and to abandon the pursuit in which their happiness is placed, would be worse than confiscation and downright tyranny; that the private collectors cannot properly be described as law-breakers and injurious persons, since they count among their numbers hundreds of country gentlemen of position, professional men (including clergymen), noblemen, magistrates, and justices of the peace, and distinguished naturalists—all honourable men.
To put in one word on this last very delicatepoint: Where, in collecting, does the honourable man draw the line, and sternly refuse to enrich his cabinet with a long-wished-for specimen of a rare British species?—a specimen "in the flesh," not only "British killed" but obtained in the county; not killed wantonly, nor stolen by some poaching rascal, but unhappily shot in mistake for something else by an ignorant young under-keeper, who, in fear of a wigging, took it secretly to a friend at a distance and gave it to him to get rid of. The story of the unfortunate killing of the rare bird varies in each case when it has to be told to one whose standard of morality is very high even with regard to his hobby. My experience is, that where there are collectors who are men of means, there you find their parasites, who know how to treat them, and who feed on their enthusiasms.
In my rambles about the country during the last few years, I have neglected no opportunity of conversing with landowners and large tenants on this subject, and, with the exception of one man, all those I have spoken to agreed that owners generally—not nine in every ten, as I had put it, but ninety-nine in every hundred—would gladly welcome a law to put down the collecting of British birds by private persons. The one man who disagreed is the ownerof an immense estate, and he was the bitterest of all in denouncing the scoundrels who came to steal his birds; and if a law could be made to put an end to such practices he would, he said, be delighted; but he drew the line at forbidding a man to collect birds on his own property. "No, no!" he concluded; "thatwould be an interference with the liberty of the subject." Then it came out that he was a collector himself, and was very proud of the rare species in his collection! If I had known that before, I should not have gone out of my way to discuss the subject with him.
Clearly, then, there is a very strong case for legislation. How strong the case is I am not yet able to show, my means not having enabled me to carry out an intention of discussing the subject with a much greater number of landowners, and of addressing a circular later stating the case to all the landlords and shooting-tenants in the country. That remains to be done; in the meantime this chapter will serve to bring the subject to the attention of a considerable number of persons who would prefer that our birds should be preserved rather than that they should be exterminated in the interests of a certain number of individuals whose amusement it is to collect such objects.
That a law on the lines suggested will be made sooner or later is my belief: that it may come soon is my hope and prayer, lest we have to say of the Dartford warbler, and of twenty other species named in this chapter, as we have had to say of so many others that have gone