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A Year with the Birds
A Year with the Birds / Third Edition, Enlarged
PREFACE
This little book is nothing more than an attempt to help those who love birds, but know little about them, to realize something of the enjoyment which I have gained, in work-time as well as in holiday, for many years past, from the habit of watching and listening for my favourites.
What I have to tell, such as it is, is told in close relation to two or three localities: an English city, an English village, and a well-known district of the Alps. This novelty (if it be one) is not likely, I think, to cause the ordinary reader any difficulty. Oxford is so familiar to numbers of English people apart from its permanent residents, that I have ventured to write of it without stopping to describe its geography; and I have purposely confined myself to the city and its precincts, in order to show how rich in bird-life an English town may be. The Alps, too, are known to thousands, and the walk I have described in Chapter III., if the reader should be unacquainted with it, may easily be followed by reference to the excellent maps of the Oberland in the guide-books of Ball or Baedeker. The chapters about the midland village, which lies in ordinary English country, will explain their own geography.
One word about the title and the arrangement of the chapters. We Oxford tutors always reckon our year as beginning with the October term, and ending with the close of the Long Vacation. My chapters are arranged on this reckoning; to an Oxford residence from October to June, broken only by short vacations, succeeds a brief holiday in the Alps; then comes a sojourn in the midlands; and of the leisurely studies which the latter part of the Long Vacation allows, I have given an ornithological specimen in the last chapter.
Some parts of the first, second, and fifth chapters have appeared in the Oxford Magazine, and I have to thank the Editors for leave to reprint them. The third chapter, or rather the substance of it, was given as a lecture to the energetic Natural History Society of Marlborough College, and has already been printed in their reports; the sixth chapter has been developed out of a paper lately read before the Oxford Philological Society.
The reader will notice that I have said very little about uncommon birds, and have tried to keep to the habits, songs, and haunts of the commoner kinds, which their very abundance endears to their human friends. I have made no collection, and it will therefore be obvious to ornithologists that I have no scientific knowledge of structure and classification beyond that which I have obtained at second-hand. And, indeed, if I thought I were obtruding myself on the attention of ornithologists, I should feel as audacious as the Robin which is at this moment, in my neighbour’s outhouse, sitting on eggs for which, with characteristic self-confidence, she has chosen a singular resting-place in an old cage, once the prison-house of an ill-starred Goldfinch.
There are few days, from March to July, when even the shortest stroll may not reveal something of interest to the careful watcher. It was pleasant, this brilliant spring morning, to find that a Redstart, perhaps the same individual noticed on page 120, had not forgotten my garden during his winter sojourn in the south; and that a pair of Pied Flycatchers, the first of their species which I have known to visit us here, were trying to make up their minds to build their nest in an old gray wall, almost within a stone’s throw of our village church.
Kingham, Oxon.
April 24, 1886.
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
My little book, which never expected to spread the circle of its acquaintance much beyond its Oxford friends, has been introduced by the goodwill of reviewers to a wider society, and has been apparently welcomed there. To enable it to present itself in the world to better advantage, I have added to it a new chapter on the Alpine birds, and have made a considerable number of additions and corrections in the original chapters; but I hope I have left it as modest and unpretending as I originally meant it to be.
During the process of revision, I have been aided by valuable criticisms and suggestions from several ornithological and bird-loving friends, and particularly from Rev. H. A. Macpherson, A. H. Macpherson, Esq., O. V. Aplin, Esq., and W. T. Arnold, Esq., whose initials will be found here and there in notes and appendices. I have also to thank Archdeacon Palmer for most kindly pointing out some blemishes in the chapter on the Birds of Virgil.
W. WARDE FOWLER.
Lincoln College, Oxford.
Nov. 19, 1886.
NOTE TO THIRD EDITION
Though my knowledge of birds has naturally grown fast since I wrote these chapters, I have thought it better, except in one instance, to resist the temptation of re-writing or interpolating for this edition. The book stands almost exactly as it was when the second edition was issued; but the list of Oxford birds is omitted, as Mr. Aplin’s work on the Birds of Oxfordshire, shortly to be published by the Clarendon Press, will embody all the information there given. I regret that the frontispiece, drawn for the original edition by my friend Professor W. Baldwin Spencer, can no longer be reproduced.
I wish to express my thanks to Mr. B. H. Blackwell, of Oxford, not only for the care and pains he bestowed upon the issue of the former editions, but for the ready courtesy with which he fell in with my wish to transfer the book to the hands of Messrs. Macmillan.
W. W. F.
June 4, 1889.
CHAPTER I.
OXFORD: AUTUMN AND WINTER
For several years past I have contrived, even on the busiest or the rainiest Oxford mornings, to steal out for twenty minutes or half an hour soon after breakfast, and in the Broad Walk, the Botanic Garden, or the Parks, to let my senses exercise themselves on things outside me. This habit dates from the time when I was an ardent fisherman, and daily within reach of trout; a long spell of work in the early morning used to be effectually counteracted by an endeavour to beguile a trout after breakfast.
By degrees, and owing to altered circumstances, the rod has given way to a field-glass, and the passion for killing has been displaced by a desire to see and know; a revolution which I consider has been beneficial, not only to the trout, but to myself. In the peaceful study of birds I have found an occupation which exactly falls in with the habit I had formed – for it is in the early morning that birds are most active and least disturbed by human beings; an occupation too which can be carried on at all times of the day in Oxford with much greater success than I could possibly have imagined when I began it. Even for one who has not often time or strength to take long rambles in the country round us, it is astonishing how much of the beauty, the habits, and the songs of birds may be learnt within the city itself, or in its immediate precincts.
The fact is, that for several obvious reasons, Oxford is almost a Paradise of birds. All the conditions of the neighbourhood, as it is now, are favourable to them. The three chief requisites of the life of most birds are food, water, and some kind of cover. For food, be they insect-eaters, or grub-eaters, they need never lack near Oxford. Our vast expanse of moist alluvial meadow – unequalled at any other point in the Thames valley – is extraordinarily productive of grubs and flies, as it is of other things unpleasant to man. Any one can verify this for himself who will walk along the Isis on a warm summer evening, or watch the Sand-martins as he crosses the meadows to Hincksey. Snails too abound; no less than ninety-three species have been collected and recorded by a late pupil of mine. The ditches in all the water-meadows are teeming with fresh-water mollusks, and I have seen them dying by hundreds when left high and dry in a sultry season. Water of course is everywhere; the fact that our city was built at the confluence of Isis and Cherwell has had a good deal of influence on its bird-life. But after all, as far as the city itself is concerned, it is probably the conservative tranquillity and the comfortable cover of the gardens and parks that has chiefly attracted the birds. I fancy there is hardly a town in Europe of equal size where such favourable conditions are offered them, unless it be one of the old-fashioned well-timbered kind, such as Wiesbaden, Bath, or Dresden. The college system, which has had so much influence on Oxford in other ways, and the control exercised by the University over the government of the town, have had much to do with this, and the only adverse element even at the present day is the gradual but steady extension of building to the north, south, and west. A glance at a map of Oxford will show how large a space in the centre of the town is occupied by college gardens, all well-timbered and planted, and if to these are added Christchurch Meadow, Magdalen Park, the Botanic Garden, and the Parks, together with the adjoining fields, it will be seen that there must be abundant opportunity for observations, and some real reason for an attempt to record them.
Since the appearance in the Oxford Magazine, in May, 1884, of a list of “The Birds of Oxford City,” I have been so repeatedly questioned about birds that have been seen or heard, that it is evident there are plenty of possessors of eyes and ears, ready and able to make use of them. There are many families of children growing up in “the Parks” who may be glad to learn that life in a town such as Oxford is, does not exclude them from some of the pleasures of the country. And I hold it to be an unquestioned fact, that the direction of children’s attention to natural objects is one of the most valuable processes in education. When these children, or at least the boys among them, go away to their respective public schools, they will find themselves in the grip of a system of compulsory game-playing which will effectually prevent any attempt at patient observation. There is doubtless very much to be said for this system, if it be applied, like a strong remedy, with real discriminating care; but the fact is beyond question, that it is doing a great deal to undermine and destroy some of the Englishman’s most valuable habits and characteristics, and among others, his acuteness of observation, in which, in his natural state, he excels all other nationalities. It is all the more necessary that we should teach our children, before they leave home, some of the simplest and most obvious lessons of natural history.
So in the following pages it will be partly my object to write of the Oxford birds in such a way that any one of any age may be able to recognize some of the most interesting species that meet the eye or ear of a stroller within the precincts of the city. And with this object before me, it will be convenient, I think, to separate winter and summer, counting as winter the whole period from October to March, and as summer the warm season from our return to Oxford in April up to the heart of the Long Vacation; and we will begin with the beginning of the University year, by which plan we shall gain the advantage of having to deal with a few birds only to start with, and those obvious to the eye among leafless branches, thus clearing the way for more difficult observation of the summer migrants, which have to be detected among all the luxuriousness of our Oxford foliage.
I shall call the birds by their familiar English names, wherever it is possible to do so without danger of confounding species; but for accuracy’s sake, a list of all birds noticed in these pages, with their scientific names according to the best, or at any rate the latest, terminology, will be given in an appendix.
When we return to Oxford after our Long Vacation, the only summer migrants that have not departed southwards are a few Swallows, to be seen along the banks of the river, and half-a-dozen lazy Martins that may cling for two or three weeks longer to their favourite nooks about the buildings of Merton and Magdalen. Last year (1884) none of these stayed to see November, so far as I could ascertain; but they were arrested on the south coast by a spell of real warm weather, where the genial sun was deluding the Robins and Sparrows into fancying the winter already past. In some years they may be seen on sunny days, even up to the end of the first week of November, hawking for flies about the meadow-front of Merton, probably the warmest spot in Oxford. White of Selborne saw one as late as the 20th of November, on a very sunny warm morning, in one of the quadrangles of Christchurch; it belonged, no doubt, to a late September brood, and had been unable to fly when the rest departed.
It is at first rather sad to find silence reigning in the thickets and reed-beds that were alive with songsters during the summer term. The familiar pollards and thorn-bushes, where the Willow-warblers and Whitethroats were every morning to be seen or heard, are like so many desolate College rooms in the heart of the Long Vacation. Deserted nests, black and mouldy, come to light as the leaves drop from the trees – nurseries whose children have gone forth to try their fortune in distant countries. But we soon discover that things are not so bad as they seem. The silence is not quite unbroken: winter visitors arrive, and the novelty of their voices is cheering, even if they do not break into song; some kinds are here in greater numbers than in the hot weather, and others show themselves more boldly, emerging from leafy recesses in search of food and sunshine.
Every autumn brings us a considerable immigration of birds that have been absent during the summer, and increases the number of some species who reside with us in greater or less abundance all the year. Among these is the familiar Robin. My friend the Rev. H. A. Macpherson, in his recently published Birds of Cumberland, tells us that in that northern county the Robins slip quietly away southward in autumn. And it is in September and October that every town and village in the south of England is enlivened by their numbers and the pathetic beauty of their song; a song which I have observed as being of finer quality in England than on the continent, very possibly owing to a greater abundance of rich food. I have been even tempted to fancy that our English Robin is a finer and stouter bird than his continental relations. Certainly he is more numerous here at all times of the year, and he may travel where he pleases without fear of persecution; while the French and German Robins, who for the most part make for Italy in the autumn, return in spring in greatly diminished numbers, owing to the incurable passion of the Italians for “robins on toast.”
It does not seem that they come to us in great numbers from foreign shores, as do many others of our common birds at this time of the year; but they move northwards and southwards within our island, presumably seeking always a moderately warm climate. At Parsons’ Pleasure I have seen the bushes literally alive with them in October and November, in a state of extreme liveliness and pugnacity. This is the great season of their battles. Most country-people know of the warfare between the old and young Robins, and will generally tell you that the young ones kill their parents. The truth seems to be that after their autumnal moult, in the confidence of renewed strength, the old ones attack their offspring, and succeed in forcing them to seek new homes. This combativeness is of course accompanied by fresh vigour of song. Birds will sing, as I am pretty well convinced, under any kind of pleasant or exciting emotion – such as love, abundance of food, warmth, or anger; and the outbreak of the Robin’s song in autumn is to be ascribed, in part at least, to the last of these. Other reasons may be found, such as restored health after the moult, or the arrival in a warmer climate after immigration, or possibly even the delusion, already noticed, which not uncommonly possesses them in a warm autumn, that it is their duty to set about pairing and nest-building already. But all these would affect other species also, and the only reason which seems to suit the idiosyncrasies of the Robin is this curious rivalry between young and old.