RECREATIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY.-No. X. SINGING BIRDS-VISITERS. "Glad moment is it when the throng Of warblers in full concert strong, Strive and not vainly strive-to rout The lagging shower, and force coy Phœbus out; Issuing from her cloudy shrine." WORDSWORTH. How different has the season been from that which frowned when we last addressed our readers on this subject. In the present year the honest ancient severity of winter bringing to our comparatively open southern waters clouds of hyperborean web-footed fowl, has been followed by a good old-fashioned spring, with the hawthorn in bloom, and even the oak leaf out near London early in May-such a spring as we remember in our childhood, when the live-long day was passed in the balmy open air. How tranquil was it to lie among the high and thick sward, already hained up for the scythe, on the verge of the orchard, then one sheet of blossom, looking askant at the insects in their goldbe-dropped and gorgeously emblazoned coats, climbing up the stalks of the herbage to gain vantage for their flight, or gazing into the clear blue heaven above in speculation whether the mote, all but invisible, were the lark, whose carol mellowed by distance fell upon the ear, while the little sister, near at hand -"As in the shining grass she sat conceal'd, Sang to herself;" and then the importance with which we returned to the house, big with the secret that we had discovered the nest of some errant turkey or guinea-hen, which all the acuteness and experience of the dairy-maid had failed to detect. Those were happy days :-but this is prosing; and we proceed to fulfil our promise of passing rapidly in review those melodious visiters who hasten from foreign lands to make the hedgerows, orchards, and gardens of these fortunate islands their nuptial bowers. This is no place for physiological discussion, and our patrons may be assured that they are not about to be drawn into a dissertation on the general organization of the feathered tribes; but there are few who have thought at all on the subject who have not been struck with the provision against the entire loss of progeny which would otherwise arise from the acts of those who rob nests for profit or wantonness. The eggs abstracted from the nests of the Phasianida,* Tetraonidæ,+ Plovers, and a long list of others, are replaced by the females as long as the number appears to be incomplete. The pilferings of the schoolboy bear hard upon the constitutions of the Merulida and the Pheasants, common fowls, &c. thrushes. Grouse, partridges, &c. Blackbirds and smaller birds; but, unless nature is quite exhausted by repeated robberies, the bereaved parents set about constructing a new nest, finish it, and replenish it. How is this effected? By one of those beautiful adaptations which meet the zoologist at every turn, and bring home to his heart the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator. On the breast of the sitting hen is a plexus, or net-work of blood-vessels, which are completely filled during the time of incubation; but as long as there is a demand for eggs, and the bird goes on laying, the blood is directed internally, in order to secure the supply till the full complement is laid. When that is accomplished, the blood is no longer sent inwards, but is determined to the plexus on the breast; and no doubt the smooth and rounded surfaces of the eggs are soothing to the inflamed bosom of the mother, making her apparently hard and close confinement a labour of pleasure and love. We shall have occasion in the course of this sketch to present some striking instances which show that among other mental powers-yes, mental, for it is certain that birds are gifted with something beyond mere instinct-the songsters who visit us in the season of love, joy, and hope, have very retentive memories. Year after year, should they escape the ravages of the hawk, or of the still more destructive gun, the same pair of visiters will return to the identical nest in its cosy nook, if rude hands have not destroyed the comfortable little home. By those who respect their loves and domestic arrangements our feathered summer visiters are looked for as friends returning from a far country, and their first appearance on some warm dewy spring morning at the trellis of the cottage door, or the ivied window, or in the well-known laburnum or lilac, is hailed by true lovers of nature with a thrill of pleasure. The songsters themselves seem hardly less pleased when they find all right; and while they warble right merrily, peer down through the open window with their bright little eyes, as who should say, 66 there you are at breakfast in your old places, good luck t'ye." all In passing our feathered friends in rapid review, we think it better not to notice them in the order of their coming, but rather according to their powers of song: thus the Muscicapide, or flycatchers, and the swallows, have no great pretensions to music, though musical to a certain degree they are, and we will commence with them. The spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa grisola) can hardly be said to be a song-bird, for a chirping call-note forms his whole musical stock; but it is one of the most welcome and constant of our migratory birds, and the untiring zeal with which it clears the neighbourhood of small insects, such as gnats, make it a cherished guest. Perched on the top of a stake, or a post, or an upper gate-bar, or an outlying branch, the bird remains motionless, till some luckless insect, humming his lay as carelessly as his brother "water-fly," the dandy, hums the favourite air of the last new opera, comes within his range: off darts the fly-catcher, finishing the song and the life of the performer at the same instant, and returns to his station to repeat the exterminating process through the whole day. He is one of our latest visiters, seldom arriving till late in May,* and his quiet brown hair coat and his dull white waist In White's Calendar the earliest and latest periods noted, are May 10 and May 30: in Markwick's, April 29 and May 21. coat, spotted and streaked with dark brown, are rarely seen till the oak leaf has well burst the bud. As soon as the bird arrives, it sets about the work of incubation. "The flycatcher," says the inimitable author of the "History of Selborne," "is of all our summer birds the most mute and the most familiar; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine or a sweetbrier against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door, where people are going in and out all day long." We observed a pair for several years, which built in a trellised porch covered with woodbine and the white sweet-scented clematis, undisturbed by the constant ingress and egress of the inmates, many of whom were children, or the early and late arrivals and departures of guests. Few places indeed come amiss to this familiar bird as a locality for its nest. Thus a pair-rather improvident architects those-built on the head of a garden rake, which had been left near a cottage.* Two others made their nest in a bird-cage, which was suspended with the door open from a branch in a garden.† Another pair chose the angle of a lamp-post in a street at Leeds, and there they reared their young.‡ A nest with five eggs was found on the ornamental crown of a lamp near Portlandplace, and this nest was seen by the well-known author of "British Birds and British Fishes," on the top of the lamp at the office of Woods and Forests, in Whitehall-place. "Of three cup-shaped nests before me," says Mr. Yarrell, one is formed on the outside of old dark-coloured moss, mixed with roots, the lining of grass stems, with only two or three white feathers; the second has the bottom and outside of fresh green moss, lined with a few grass bents, long horse-hairs, and several mottled feathers, apparently those of a turkey; the third is similar to the last in the outside, but lined with long horse-hairs, wool, and feathers." As a proof of the memory of this species, and something more, we may mention a fact recorded by Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq., the late lamented president of the Horticultural Society of London. A pair built in his stove for many successive years. Whenever the thermometer in the house was above 72°, the bird quitted her eggs; but as soon as the mercury sank below that point, she resumed her seat upon them. This is very like reasoning. The four or five eggs of this interesting little bird are white, with a bluish tinge, spotted with a faint red, and the worthy male is most assiduous in feeding the female while she sits; and that as late as nine o'clock at night.§ One word in favour of these poor little birds, which are too often mercilessly shot as fruit-eaters. That they may be seen about cherry and raspberry trees, when the fruit is ripe, there is no doubt, but Mr. Yarrel observes-correctly in our opinion-that they seem rather to be induced to visit fruit-trees for the sake of the flies which the luscious fruits attract, than for the sake of the fruits themselves, since, he tells us, on examination of the stomachs of fly-catchers killed under such circumstances, no remains of fruit were found. But whence comes this insect-destroyer, so common on every lawn, *Magazine of Nat. Hist., vol. i. + Blackwall. Ornithology. || Jesse. § White. Atkinson. Compendium of and in every garden? From the arid regions of Africa, where its range extends to the west, and even to the south, as far as the Cape. In the pied flycatcher (Muscicapa atricapilla), a much more rare visitant, we have the powers of song more developed. Its notes, according to Mr. Blackwall, are varied and pleasing, and are compared by Mr. Dovaston to those of the redstart. The male of this pretty species, with his deep black back, and under covering of pure white, with which the forehead and wings are marked, is, together with its more sombre partner, comparatively abundant near the charming lakes. of Cumberland and Westmorland. Seven or eight eggs, of a uniform pale blue, are laid in a rather inartificial nest of grass and roots, dead bents, and hair, in holes of decayed trees, oaks principally. In feeding, it resembles the common flycatcher. The south of Europe, particularly the countries that coast the Mediterranean, abound with this species. In the Hirundinidæ, or swallow family, we have another form of insect-scourge. The attacks of the flycatchers are desultory, and may be compared so those of an enemy in ambush; but the swallows come upon the insect hosts in legions, charging and dashing through their ranks with their open fly-traps of mouths. The ranks close, as does a column of infantry or cavalry through which the cannon has cut a lane; but the winged foe wheels round again, and as the "insect youth" dance in the sun, annihilates hundreds. The survivors, like their brother mortals, pursue their dance, and in the midst of life are in death. It may seem strange at first sight to see the Hirundinidæ mentioned as songsters; but to say nothing of the exhilarating scream of the swift as he darts round the steeple, or of the twitter of the windowswallow and the bank or sand martin-sounds which all assist in making the air musical, and “ aid the full concert, "the chimney-swallow, Hirundo rustica, can warble softly indeed, but sweetly. “The swallow,” says White, "is a delicate songster, and in soft sunny weather sings both perching and flying: on trees in a kind of concert, and on chimney-tops." This charming bird, the harbinger of spring, has been welcomed in all countries, and will be so welcomed as long as the seasons last. The poets of all ages have hailed his advent; and our own Davy, with whose deep philosophy the poetical temperament was strikingly mingled, has pronounced his history in a few bright and true words: "He lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature: winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn for the myrtle and orange-groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa. * The Hirundinide which visit this country are the species last above mentioned, the martin (Hirundo urbica), the sand-martin (Hirundo riparia), the common swift (Hirundot apus), and-but very rarelythe alpine or white-bellied swift (Cypselus alpinus). The chimney-swallow makes his appearance amongst us earlier or later, according to the mildness or severity of the season, but the 10th of April appears to be the general average of the time of its arrival; the earliest period noted by White is the 26th of March, and the latest * Salmonia. f Cypselus of modern authors. the 20th of April; the 7th of April and the 27th of that month, are the respective dates recorded by Markwick. The old French quatrain thus celebrates his habits: "Dans les maisons fait son nid l'Hirondelle, Ou bien souvent dans quelque cheminée : Tant qu'l n'y a oyseau plus léger qu'elle.” He who would hear the swallow sing must rise early, for the bird is a matutinal songster, as Apuleius well knew. It would be a waste of time to do more than hint at the exploded fables of swallows retiring under water in the winter, though from time to time some worthy goody or gaffer even now tries to revive them, not without some recipients of the tale, so prone is the human mind to catch at any thing wonderful, and so constantly does error again rise to the surface! but the evidence of the migration of the whole family is now so complete and irresistible, that it amounts to absolute proof. Again and again have they been seen crossing the sea, sometimes dropping into it to take a marine bath, and then pursuing their journey refreshed and exhilarated. The martin, with his pure white lower back and under parts, most probably turns his neb northward, from Africa, at the same time with the swallow, but his powers of wing cannot keep pace with the extensive sail of the latter, and he generally arrives a few days later. The earliest and latest periods recorded by White are the 28th of March and the 1st of May, and those given by Markwick are the 14th of April and the 18th of May. The sand-martin arrives earlier than either of the other two species. The earliest and latest dates noted by White are the 21st of March and the 12th of April; Markwick's are the 8th of April and the 16th of May. The average time of the arrival of the common-swift is early in May; but White saw it as early as the 13th of April, and the latest time noticed by him is the 7th of May. Markwick never saw it earlier than the 28th of April, and the latest arrival observed by him was the 19th of that month. The great alpine-swift, which chooses the highest rocks and the most towering cathedrals for his nesting places, can only be considered as an accidental visiter to these islands, and does not appear to have been seen here earlier than in June. The architecture of the three first species of this family here noticed, deserves attention. Early in the season the swallows and housemartins may be seen on the ground in moist places, or near the edges of ponds or puddles. They are then collecting the clay or mortar, which, strengthened with straws and grass-stems to keep it together in the case of the swallow, is to form their nest. One course or raise only, as the Devonshire men call it, so to speak, is laid on at a time, and that is left to settle and dry before the next is added, as men proceed in making a cob-wall, and thus the work proceeds, day after day, till the saucer-shaped nest of the swallow and the hemispherical cob-house of the martin are complete. The sand-martin proceeds upon a different plan: he is a miner, and excavates his dwelling in the sand-bank, as the ancient Egyptian carved his temple out of the solid rock. Look at the bill of this little bird. |