Birds in a Cornish Village
I
Taking Stock of the Birds
Having begun, or first written, this book in one village, which was near London, I am now finishing, or re-writing, it in another in “the westest part of all the land,” over three hundred miles from the first. Here I had to go over this ancient work of twenty-three years ago, which was also my first English bird book, to prepare it for a new edition; and after all necessary corrections, omissions and additions of fresh matter made in the foregoing parts, it seemed best to throw out the whole of the concluding portion, which dealt mainly with the question of bird-preservation as
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it presented itself at that time and is now out of date, thanks to the legislation of recent years and to the growth in this country of the feeling or desire for birds during the last two or three decades. In place of this discarded matter I propose to give here the results of recent observations on the bird life of a Cornish village.
My residence in the Cornish Village (or villages) was during May and June, 1915, and again from October of the same year to June, 1916. These were months of ill-health, so that I was prevented from pursuing my customary outdoor rambling life; but, like that poor creature the barnyard fowl that can’t use its wings, instinctively, or from old habit, I used my eyes in keeping a watch on the feathered (and flying) people about me.
The village, Lelant, is on the Hayle estuary, and to see the Atlantic one has but to walk past the grey old church at the end of the street, where the ground rises, to find oneself in a wilderness of towans, as the sand-hills are there called, clothed in their rough, grey-green marram grass and spreading on either hand round the bay of St. Ives. A beautiful sight, for the sea on a
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sunny day is of that marvellous blue colour seen only in Cornwall; far out on a rock on the right hand stands the shining white Godrevy lighthouse, and on the left, on the opposite side of the bay, the little ancient fishing-town of St. Ives.
The river or estuary, in sight of the doors and windows of the village, was haunted every day by numbers of gulls and curlews. These last numbered about one hundred and fifty birds, and were always there except at full tide, when they would fly away to the fields and moors. Of all my bird neighbours I think that these gave me most pleasure, especially at night, when lying awake I would listen by the hour to the perpetual curlew conversation going on in the dark—an endless series of clear modulated notes and trills, with a beautiful expression of wildness and freedom, a reminder of lonely seashores and mountains and moorlands in the north country. What wonder that Stevenson, sick in his tropical island—sick for his cold grey home so many thousands of miles away, wished once more to hear the whaup crying over the graves of his forefathers, and to hear no more at all!
Of bird music by day there was little; you would
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hear more of it in one morning in that small rustic village in Berkshire where the first part of this book was written than in a whole summer in one of these West Cornwall villages, so few comparatively are the songsters. Nor was this scarcity in the village only; it was everywhere, as I found when able to get out for a few hours during my two spring seasons in the place. Close by were the extensive woods of Trevalloe, where I was struck by the extraordinary silence and where I listened in vain for a single note from blackcap, garden-warbler, willow-wren, wood-wren, or redstart. The thrushes, chaffinch, chiff-chaff, and greenfinch were occasionally heard; outside the wood the buntings, chats, and the skylark were few and far between.
This scarcity of small birds is, I think, due in the first place to the extraordinary abundance of the jackdaw, the diligent seeker after small birds’ nests, and to the autumn and winter pastime of bush-beating to which men and boys are given in these parts, and which the Cornish authorities refuse to suppress.
After a time, when, owing to increasing debility, I was confined more and more to the
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village, I began to concentrate my attention on a few common species that were always present, particularly on the three commonest—rook, daw, and starling; the first two residents, the starling, a winter visitor from September to April.
In October, I started feeding the birds at the house where I was staying as a guest, throwing the scraps on a lawn at the back which sloped down towards the estuary. First came all the small birds in the immediate neighbourhood—robin, dunnock, wagtail, chaffinch, throstle, blackbird, and blue and ox-eye tits. Then followed troops of starlings, and soon all the rooks and daws in the village began to see what was going on and come too, and this attracted the gulls from the estuary—I wished that it had drawn the curlews; and all these big ones were so greedy and bold, so noisy and formidable-looking that the small birds were quite driven out; all except the starlings that came in hungry crowds and were determined to get their share.
At the beginning of December I had to move to a nursing-home at the Convent of the Sisters of the Cross at the adjacent village of Hayle, just across the estuary. The Convent buildings and
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grounds and gardens are fortunately outside the ugly village, and my room had an exceptionally big window occupying almost the whole wall on one side, with an outlook to the south over the green fields and moors towards Helston. An ideal sick-room for a man who can’t be happy without the company of birds, and here, even when lying on my bed before I was able to sit or stand by the window, a large portion of the sky, rainy or blue, was visible, and rooks and daws and gulls and troops of starlings, and the curlews from the river, were seen coming and going all day long.
But it was much better when I was able to go to the window, since now, by feeding them, I could draw the birds to me. I fed them on a green field beneath my window, where the Convent milch-cows were accustomed to graze for some hours each day. All through the winter there was grass for them, and I was glad to have them there, as the cow is my favourite beast, and it was also pleasant to see the wintering starlings consorting with them, clustering about their noses, just as they do in the pasture lands in summer time. But I found it best to feed the birds when
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the cows were not there, on account of the behaviour of one of them, a young animal who had not yet been sobered by having a calf of her own. She was a frivolous young thing and when tired of feeding, she would start teasing the old cows, pushing them with her horns, then flinging up her hind legs to challenge them to a romp. The sight of a crowd of birds under my window would bring her at a gallop to the spot to find out what all the fuss was about, and the birds would be driven off.
One morning I was at my window when the field was empty of bird and beast life with the exception of a solitary old rook, a big bird who was a constant attendant and so much bigger than most of the rooks that I had come to know it well. By and by the young cow walked into the field by herself and, after gazing all round as if surprised at finding the place so lifeless, she caught sight of and fixed her eyes on the old rook working at the turf some fifty or sixty yards away. Presently she began walking towards it, and when within about twenty yards put her head down and charged it. The rook paid no attention until she was almost on it, then rose up,
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emitting its angriest, most raucous screams while hovering just over her head, and having thus relieved its indignant feelings it flew heavily away to the far end of the field, and settling down began prodding away at the soil. The cow, standing still, gazed after it, and one could almost imagine her saying: “So you won’t get out of the field! Well! I’ll soon make you. I’m going to have it all to myself this morning.” And at once she began rapidly walking towards the bird. But half-way to it was the post set up in the middle of the field for the cows to rub their hides, and on coming abreast of it the sight of it and its proximity suggested the delight of a rub, and turning off at right angles she walked straight to the post and began rubbing herself against it. The rook went on with its business, and after that there was no more quarrelling.
Another morning this same old rook came with his mate to the field: separating, they came down a distance of a hundred yards or more apart and began searching for grubs. By and by the old cock discovered something particularly good and after vigorously prodding the turf for a few moments he sprang up and flew excitedly to his
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mate, who instantly knew what this action meant and began fluttering her wings and crying for the dainty morsel which he proceeded to deliver into her wide-open mouth. Having fed her, he flew back to the same spot and began working again.
This is a common action of the rooks, and I saw this same bird feed his mate on other occasions during the winter months, when I have no doubt that he, poor wretch, could hardly find food enough to keep himself alive during the dark season of everlasting wind and rain when the dim daylight lasted for about six hours. But I never saw a daw or starling feed his mate, or feed another daw or starling, although I watched closely every day and often for an hour at a stretch, and though I am convinced that the starling, like the rook and crow and daw, and in fact all the Corvidae, pairs for life. To this point I will return presently; let me first relate another incident about our frivolous and irresponsible young cow.
One morning when the cows were in the field, some herring-gulls drifted by and a few of them remained circling about above the field. I threw
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out a piece of bread, and a troop of starlings rushed to it, and one of the gulls dropped down and took possession of it, but had scarcely began tearing at it when two more gulls dropped down and the first bird, lifting his wings began screaming “Hands off!” at the others, and the others, also raising their wings, screamed their wailing screams in reply. The young cow, attracted by the noise, gazed at them for a few moments, then all at once putting her head down furiously charged them. The three gulls rose up simultaneously and floated over her and then away, leaving her standing on the spot, shaking her head in anger and disgust at their escape. A rhinoceros charging a ball of thistledown or a soap-bubble, and causing it to float away with the wind it created, would not have been a more ludicrous spectacle.
II
Do Starlings Pair for Life?
From my boyhood, when I first began to observe birds, I started with the imbibed notion that those which paired for life were the rare exceptions—the dove that rhymed with love, the eagle, and perhaps half a dozen more. Who, for instance, would imagine that the sexes could be faithful in parasitical species like the cuckoo of Europe and the cow-birds of America? Yet even as a boy I made the discovery that an Argentine cow-bird that lays its eggs in the nests of other species, does actually pair for life; and so effectually mated is it, that on no day and no season of the year will you see a male without his female: if he flies she flies with him and feeds and drinks with him, and when he perches she perches at his side, and he never utters a sound but a responsive sound immediately falls from her devoted beak.
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Again, it may seem unlikely that there can be pairing for life in species, like the chaffinch of northern Europe and, with us, of Scotland, in which the sexes separate and migrate separately. Also of non-gregarious species like the nightingale in which the males arrive in this country several days before the females. Yet I am confident that if we could catch and mark a considerable number of pairs it would be found that the same male and female found one another and re-mated every year.
It comes to this, that birds may pair for life, yet not be all the time or all the year together, as in the case of hawks, crows, owls, herons, and many others. In numberless species which undoubtedly pair for life the sexes keep apart during several hours each day, and there is some evidence that those that separate for a part of the year remain faithful.
An incident, related by Miss Ethel Williams, of Winchester, in her natural history notes contributed to a journal in that city, bears on this point. She had among the bird pensioners in the garden of her house adjoining the Cathedral green, a female thrush that grew tame enough to
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fly into the house and feed on the dining-room table. Her thrush paired and bred for several seasons in the garden, and the young, too, were tame and would follow their mother into the house to be fed. The male was wild and too shy ever to venture in. She noticed the first year that it had a wing-feather which stuck out, owing probably to a malformation of the socket. Each year after the breeding season the male vanished, the female remaining alone through the winter months, but in spring the male came back—the same bird with the unmistakable projecting wing-feather. Yet it was certain that this bird had gone quite away, otherwise he would have returned to the garden, where there was food in abundance during the spells of frosty weather. As he did not appear it is probable that he migrated each autumn to some warmer climate beyond the sea.
I have noticed that wagtails, thrushes, blackbirds, and some other species when the young are out of the nest, divide the brood between male and female and go different ways and spend the daylight hours at a distance apart, each attending to the one or two young birds in its charge.
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One winter, a few years ago, I was staying for a few days at a cottage facing Silchester Common, and on going out after breakfast to feed the birds I particularly noticed a male grey wagtail among those that came to me, on account of its beauty and tameness. Every morning I fed it, and on my speaking to my landlady about it she said, “Oh, we know that bird well; this is the fourth winter it has spent with us, but it always came before with its mate. The poor little thing had only one leg, but managed to hop about and feed very well; this year the poor thing didn’t turn up with its mate, so we suppose it had met its death somewhere during the summer.”
I have often watched the gatherings of pied wagtails (always with a certain number of the grey species among them) in places where they spend the winter in our southern counties, at some spot where they are accustomed to congregate each evening to hold a sort of frolic before going to roost, and it has always appeared to me that the birds, both pied and grey, were in pairs. So too, in watching the starlings day after day in the field in front of my window. Well able with my binocular to observe them closely, I saw much
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to convince me that the starling, too, lives all the year with his mate.
Each morning the birds that had made our village their daily feeding-ground, would, on arrival from the roosting-place in one body, break up into numerous small parties of half a dozen to twenty or more birds. All day long these little flocks were hurrying about from field to field, spending but a short time at one spot, so hungry were they and anxious to find a more productive one, and in every field they would meet and mix with other small groups, and presently all would fly, and breaking up into small parties again go off in different directions. Thus one had a constant succession of little flocks in the field from morning till night, and I found from counting the birds in each small group that in three cases in four they were in even numbers. Again, I have often seen a group of three, five, seven or nine birds on the field, and after a while a solitary starling from a neighbouring field or from some treetop near by has flown down to join the group and make the numbers even.
The birds when feeding, I have said, are always in a desperate hurry, and little wonder, since
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after a night, usually wet and cold, of from sixteen to eighteen hours and only about six to feed in, they must be in a half-starved state and frantic to find something to swallow. No sooner do they alight than they begin running about, prodding with their beaks, and all the time advancing, the birds keeping pretty well abreast. Now, from time to time you will notice that a bird finds something to delay him and is left behind by the others. On they go—prod, prod, then a little run, then prod, prod again and run again—while he, excited over his find, and vigorously digging at the roots of the grass, lets them go on without him until he is yards behind. Whenever this happens you will see one of the advancing birds pause in its prodding to look back from time to time as if anxious about the one left behind; and by and by this same bird, its anxiety increasing, will suddenly spring into the air and fly back to place itself at the side of the other, to wait quietly until it has finished its task; and no sooner does the busy one put up its head to signal that he is ready than up they spring and fly together on to the flock. No one witnessing this action can doubt for a moment that these two are mates,
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and that wherever they paired and bred originally
—in Lincoln or York or Thurso or perhaps in one of the western islands—they paired for life and will stick together, summer and winter and in all their wanderings, as long as they live.
Until one observes starlings in this close way, even to their minutest actions—I had indeed little else to do during my three winter months in this nursing-home—it is only natural to believe that among gregarious species the starling is one of those least likely to pair for life, seeing that in it the gregarious instinct is intensified and more highly developed than in most others. One would suppose that the flock, which is like an organism
—that is to say, the attachment to the flock
—would, out of the breeding season, take the place of the close relation or companionship between bird and bird seen in species known to pair for life. Only the pairing passion, one would suppose, could serve to dissolve the company of birds and this only for a brief season of about a couple of months’ duration. There is but one brood raised in the season, and the whole business of reproduction is well over before the end of June. Later breeders are those that have lost
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their first eggs or broods. And no sooner are the young brought off and instructed in the starling’s sole vocation (except his fruit-eating) of extracting the grubs it subsists on from the roots of the grass—a business which detains them for a week or two—than the married life is apparently over and the communal life resumed. The whole life of the bird is then changed; the sole tie appears to be that of the flock; home and young are forgotten: the birds range hither and thither about the land, and by and by migrate to distant places, some passing oversea, while others from the northern counties and from Scotland and the islands come down to the south of England, where they winter in millions and myriads. There they form the winter habit of congregating in immense numbers in the evening at their favourite roosting-places, and hundreds and thousands of small flocks, which during the daylight hours exist distributed over an area of hundreds of square miles all make to one point and combine into one flock. At such times they actually appear to rejoice in their own incalculable numbers and gather earlier than they need at the roosting-place, so that the whole vast gathering
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may spend an hour or so in their beloved aerial exercises.
To anyone who witnesses these gatherings and sees the birds rising from time to time from the wood, and appearing like a big black cloud in the sky, growing lighter and darker alternately as the birds scatter wide or mass themselves in a closer formation, until after wheeling about for some minutes they pour back into the trees; and who listens to the noise they make, as of a high wind in the wood, composed, as it is, of an infinity of individual voices, it must seem incredible that all these birds can keep in pairs. For how could any couple hold together in such circumstances, or when separated ever meet again in such a multitude, or, should they ever meet by chance, how recognize one another when all are exactly alike in size, shape, colour and voice?
They can, and certainly do, keep together, and when forced apart as, when pursued by a hawk, they scatter in all directions, they can quickly find one another again. They can do it because of their perfect discipline, or instinct, or the perfection of the system they follow during their autumn and winter wanderings and migrations.
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The breeding season over, the birds in each locality unite in a small flock composed of twenty or thirty to fifty or more pairs and start their wandering life. Those in the north migrate or drift south, and vast numbers, as we see, spend the winter in the southern counties. And here they have their favourite roosting-places and are accustomed to assemble in tens and hundreds of thousands. But the original small flock composed of a few pairs, is never broken up—never absorbed by the multitude. Each morning when it is light enough, the birds quit the roosting-wood, but not all together; they quit it in flocks, flock following flock so closely as to appear like a continuous stream of birds, and the streams flow out in different directions over the surrounding country. Each stream of birds is composed of scores and hundreds of units, and each unit drops out of the stream and slopes away to this or that side, to drop down on its own chosen feeding-ground, to which it returns morning after morning through the winter. When all the units have dropped out and settled on their feeding areas for the day, it may be seen that the whole country within a circuit of ten or twelve or more miles from the roosting-
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place has been occupied, that each flock has its own territory, where it splits up into some groups and spends its short hours flying about and exploring every green field, and one might almost say “every grass.” One can only explain this perfect distribution by assuming that each unit instinctively looks for unoccupied ground in its winter habitat, and that consequently there is very little overlapping. It must also be assumed that at the place of assembly in the evening each flock has its own roosting-place—its own trees and bushes where the members of the flock can still keep together and to which after each aerial performance they can return. The flock comes back to sleep on its own tree, and no doubt every couple roosts side by side on its own twig.
On the return of Spring the birds do not migrate in a body, but slip away, flock by flock, to reappear about the end of April in their old breeding-place in the North Country, with, perhaps, the loss of a few members—the one that was old and died in the season of scarcity; and one that was taken at the roost by a brown owl, and one that had its feet frozen to the perch; and was killed by a jackdaw when struggling to free
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itself; and one that was struck down by a sparrow-hawk on his homeward journey.
What I have so far been unable to trace is the career of the young after August. We see that once they are able to fend for themselves they club together in small flocks and continue together during their “brown thrush” stage, but by and by they get the adult plumage and language and are no longer distinguishable as young. Do they, then, join the old birds before the wandering and migrating south begins? And do they pair or not before the winter?