Bird Watching/Chapter 9
Watching Birds at a Straw-Stack
I have called attention in the last chapter to that independent or self-reliant quality which so many birds possess, and by virtue of which they often act differently to their fellows, even when there is a strong inducement to them to act as they do. This seems to me an important point, for it must be as the foundation-stone upon which change of habit would be built, and change of habit points out a certain path along which change of structure, were it to occur, would be preserved, and a new species be thus formed.
One might think that the most timid birds would, under ordinary circumstances, be the ones least liable to change their habits, for such change would often mean a penetrating into " fresh fields and pastures new," where they might be expected to fear and distrust in a higher degree than amidst surroundings with which they were familiar. This, perhaps, may be the case, but one must distinguish between timidity and a wary caution or prudence, which may be combined with an independent, perhaps one may even say a bold, spirit.
The moor-hen is an example of such a combination. I have watched these birds for hours browsing over some meadow-land, bordering a small and very quiet stream, near where I live. Sometimes there would be a dozen or twenty scattered over a wide space, and every now and again, when something had alarmed them, the whole troop, one taking the cue from another, would run or fly pell-mell to the water, most of them swimming across and taking refuge in a belt of reeds skirting the opposite bank, whilst some few would remain floating in midstream, ready to follow their companions if necessary. In two or three minutes, or sometimes less, they would all be back browsing again, and so continue till, all at once, there was another panic rush and flight. The cause of these stampedes was generally undiscoverable; but sometimes, when the birds stayed some time down on the water, the figure of a rustic would at length appear, walking behind a hedge, along a path bounding the little meadow. Of such a figure rooks and many other birds would have taken no notice, even when considerably nearer. One cause of alarm I frequently noted, and this was where another moorhen would come flying over the meadow, either to alight amongst those upon it, or making for a more distant point of the stream. Such birds, though not alarmed themselves—for I frequently saw the commencement and spontaneous nature of their flights—yet always brought alarm to the others: a fact which seems to me interesting, for it cannot be supposed that these would have been disquieted at the mere sight of one of their kind, and if they judged from the flying bird's manner that it was seeking safety, then they judged wrongly. This, again, does not seem likely, and the only remaining explanation is that they drew an inference—"This bird may be flying from danger"—which, I think, must have been the case. At any rate, each time it was a sauve qui peut, one of themselves sent them all in a race to the water, just as a dog or a man would have done. But I must qualify the word "all." Often—perhaps each time—one or two birds might be seen (like the pheasant) to glance warily about, as though to assure themselves whether there was danger or not, standing, the while, in a hesitating attitude, and ready, on the slightest indication, to follow their companions. Then, having satisfied themselves, they would continue quietly to browse—for moor-hens browse the grass of meadows as do geese.
Coming, now, to the opposite side of the bird's character—its boldness and enterprise—I remember one afternoon, when I had been watching the stone curlews, seeing, just as evening was falling, a moorhen walking along the piece of wire netting which skirted a wheat-field, or rather an arid waste of sand where some wheat was feebly attempting to grow. The whole country around was the chosen haunt of the former birds, as opposed, therefore, to anything damp, moist, or marshy, as can well be imagined. The moor-hen went steadily on, with a composed and mind-made-up step, never deviating from the straight line of the netting till, upon coming to where this was continued at a right angle in another direction, it found its way through, and proceeded to cross a green road skirted with fir-trees into another Sahara-like waste, where I lost it, at least a quarter of a mile from the nearest little pond or pool. Possibly it was walking from one of these to another, but quite as probably—in my experience—it was leaving its ordinary haunts for some inland part it had discovered, where it could get food to its liking. For the moor-hens living in the little creek or stream that I used to watch would range over the adjacent meadow-land, and a few of them, having come to the limit of this, would climb up a steep bank and through a hedge at its top, down again into a little bush and bramble-grown patch on the other side. One bird, indeed, that I startled, actually climbed this bank and scrambled through the hedge into the patch, instead of flying to the water; which is as though a lady were to take up Shakespeare rather than a novel, or a servant-maid to act by reason instead of by rote. Again, I have startled a moor-hen out of a large tree standing in a thicket, and a good way back from the ditch surrounding it—such a tree as one might have expected to see a wood-pigeon fly out of, but certainly not a moor-hen.
Such variations of habit are to me more interesting than those of structure, for they represent the mind, as do the latter—which they have probably in most cases preceded—the body. Changes of structure, too, if slight, are not easy to see, and as soon as they become observable the varying animal is dubbed another species, or, at least, a variety of the old one, so that one is not allowed, as it were, to see the actual passage from form to form;—one is always either at one end of the bridge or the other end. But changed habits may be marked in transitu, and there is hardly, perhaps, a bird or a beast which, if closely watched, will not be seen to act sometimes in a manner which, if persisted in to the neglect of its more usual circle of activities, would make it, in effect, a new being, though dressed in an old suit of clothes. Thus, in such a bird as the robin, which is associated—and rightly—in the popular mind with the cottage, the little rustic garden, and with woodlands wild—such scenes and surroundings, in fact, as are represented, or used to be, on Christmas cards—one may get a hint of some future little redbreasted, water-loving bird, at first no more aquatic than the water-wagtail, but becoming, perhaps, as time goes on, as accomplished a diver and clinger to stones at the bottom of running streams as is the water-ouzel—a bird as to which, Darwin says, "the acutest observer by examining its dead body would never have suspected its sub-aquatic habits."
To illustrate this, I take from my notes the following:—"A robin"—it is in December—"flies on to the trunk of a fallen tree spanning the little stream, from thence on to some weedy scum lying against it on the water, from which he picks something off and returns again to the trunk. Two or three times again he flies down and hops about on the weeds, and sometimes, whilst doing so, pecks at the great black trunk. Now he is standing on them contentedly, with the water touching his crimson breast-feathers. He is in his first or more primitive figure, for the robin has two. Either he is a little round globe with a sunset in him—his rotundity being broken only by a beak and a tail—or else very elegant, dapper, and well set up. In the first he is fluffy, for he has ruffled out his feathers, but in the last he has pressed them down and is smooth and glossy—has almost a polish on him." Again, whilst walking by the river in the early morning, the water being very low, "a robin hops down over the exposed shingle, to near the water's edge, then flies across to the opposite more muddy surface, and hops along it, pecking here and there. He again flies across and proceeds in the same way, always going up the stream, crosses again, and so on. Each time he is farther away from me, and now I lose sight of him; but this is evidently his system. How out of character he seems amidst the mud and ooze of the dank river-bed on this chill winter's morning, how little like the robin of poetry and Christmas-card, how much more in the style of some little mud-loving, stilt-walking bird: for this is often their manner of zig-zagging from shore to shore up or down the stream. I have noticed it but now in the redshank. Yet the old associations are with him, for this is home, and the thatched cottage peeps over the familiar hedge."
And here I will chronicle an experience—my own, if it be not that of others. Provided there be shrubbery about, there are but few places here in England where one can sit quietly for very long, without a robin stealing softly out and, as it were, sliding himself into the landscape. Then—however bleak or chill it may be—his presence seems to bring home comforts with it. But this is only when one is near home and home comforts—not when one is far, far away from them. I remember in the great pineforests of Norway—so lovely yet so stern in their loveliness—the robin seemed to have lost all his character. He did not suggest home and all its pleasures when home was no longer near. It was not (or perhaps it was) that by suggestion he made these seem farther off, but that his character seemed gone. Surely, things are to us as a part of what they move in with us, and, out of this, seem changed and to be something else.
I am not quite sure if the following represents any change of habits in regard to food, induced by the presence of a foreign tree, in any of the three birds that it concerns. I have occasionally watched the great-tit in our own fir-plantations, but have not yet seen him attacking the cones, though the coal-tit, as I believe, does so. For the greenfinch I can only say that I should not have thought it of him, nor is he often to be seen in such places. The nut-hatch is not common where I live.
"Standing this Christmas Eve under a large exotic conifer on the lawn of the garden here in Gloucestershire, I became aware that various birds were busy amongst its branches, and I kept hearing a curious grating noise with a strong vibration in it, which seemed to be made by them with the beak upon the large fir-cones, but as the branches were very close together, and the birds high up, I could not observe the manner of it—the sound (as I said before) being very peculiar. I therefore climbed the tree (which was easy), and the birds being now often quite near—though the branches and great clusters of needle-tufts were much in the way—I ascertained that it was the greenfinch alone which was producing the peculiar, vibratory noise, but how, exactly, he did it I could not make out. He appeared to be tearing at the woody sheaths or clubs (which stood wide apart) of the large fir-cones, and it seemed as though, to give the vibration in the sound, either the mandibles must work against each other with extraordinary swiftness, or the clubs of the cone itself vibrate in some manner against the beak, thus causing the sound in question to mingle with the scratching made by the latter against the hard surface.
"The great-tit and the nut-hatch are also busy at the cones. The former strikes them repeatedly with his bill, making a quick 'rat-tat-tat.' He attacks them either from the branch or twigs from which they hang, striking downwards, or clinging to the side of one and striking sideway-downwards, or even hanging at their tips, in which case he hammers up at them. Whilst hammering, or rather pick-axeing, he often bends his head very sharply from the body—almost at a right angle—towards the point at which his blow is aimed, and he then becomes, as it were, a natural, live pick-axe, of which his body is the handle and his head and beak the pick. After hammering a little on one of two cones that hang together, he perches on the other one, and, in the intervals of hammering it, shifts his head to the first and gives it, as it seems, a sharp investigatory glance. He then flies away.
"A nut-hatch, also, I twice see hammering at the cones, in much the same manner as the tit, and, having loosened a thin brown flake from one of them, he flies off with it in his beak. I have not yet seen the tit do this, nor did I ever see him get an insect. If he got anything at all, it must have been in one of the actual blows, become a peck, as when he hammers at a cocoa-nut hung in the garden. The greenfinches never hammered, but only bit and tugged at the clubs of the cones. Brown flakes often fell down from them, but I never saw the birds fly off with these, as the nuthatch has done. I had seen one with a flake in his bill which, however, he soon let fall to the ground.
"One of the greenfinches is again attacking the cones, and I can now see the way he does it more plainly. He places his beak between the clubs of the cones at their tips (I mean their outer ends), and then moves his head and beak rapidly, seeming, as it were, to flutter with his head, and as he does this you hear the grating, vibratory sound. All the time, he is clinging head downwards to the side of the cone, quite a feat for so large, at least for such a stout-built bird. I will not, however, be quite sure that it is to the cone itself that he clings. The fir-needles hang in bunches near them, and his claws may be fixed amongst these, though I do not think so, or, at least, not always. Besides this sound made with the beak on the fir-cones, there is another, which one often hears, and which is usually, I think, made by the greenfinch. To get at the cones, he often flies up underneath them, and hangs a little, thus, before clinging, on fluttering wings. When the tips of these strike amongst the bunches of needles, a sharp, thin, vibratory rattle is produced—also a very noticeable sound.
"The nut-hatch—or another one—now flies in again, uttering, as he arrives, a curious, high, sharp note—'zitch, zitch, zitch'—and again flies away with a thin brown flake in his bill, a very woody morsel it would seem. And now, later in the afternoon, I see a great-tit probing the cones with his bill, and he also pulls out a brown flake and flies away with it. Another does the same, hanging from the tip of a cone, on which he afterwards perches for a moment, before flying with it to another tree. Whilst standing, all this time, in the tree, I had noticed little hard brown seeds about the size of apple-pips, and which had all been cracked, lying in the forks formed by the junction of the branches with the trunk. There was hardly one such resting-place in which there were not a few of these cracked seeds. Pulling off a fir-cone, I began to pull it to pieces, and at once saw, at the base of every club where it had joined and helped to form the central pillar, the double indentation, one on either side of the median line—or mid-rib as it would be called in a true leaf—in which the two seeds had been lying. Soon I came upon a seed itself, and, attached to the outer end of it—that farthest from the base of the club—I at once recognised the little brown flaky leaf that I had seen in the bills of all three birds, but which none of them seemed to eat.
"Here, then, the whole mystery—for to my ignorance it had been such—was explained. The birds were picking out the seeds from the cone, and the way to do this was to seize the thin brown flake to which the seed was attached, and which lay all along inside each club or leaf of the cone, whereas the seed itself was right at the base, and the beak of the birds could not, perhaps (or not so easily), be pushed up so far between the stiff clubs, the hard edges of which would catch their foreheads uncomfortably. At least with the tit and greenfinch, whose bills are not long, this would seem to be likely. When the birds—as was evidently often the case—pulled out only the thin flake-leaf which had become detached from the seed, they let it fall negligently, thus conveying the impression that they had been taking trouble to no end. When, however, they flew away with it, it is to be presumed the seed was attached.
"Here, then, are three quite different birds, all busily occupied in extracting the seeds from the large cones of an exotic species of fir, but whilst two of them—the great-tit and the nut-hatch—effect this by first hammering on the cone, so as to loosen the seeds, or, rather, the woody flake to which they are attached, from the basal part of the club (if we may assume this to be the object) before pulling them out, the greenfinch procures them without any previous hammering, which is an action, perhaps, to which it is not accustomed. One should not, however, assume too hastily that the latter bird has no plan of his own for first loosening the seeds. Remembering the rapid, almost fluttering, motion—not at all like pecking or hammering—which he communicates to his head and bill, with the curious, vibratory sound—which again does not suggest an ordinary blow—that accompanies it, and how often when I could get a fairly good view of him, he seemed to be repeatedly seizing and letting his bill slip over the outer edges of the fir-clubs, I am inclined to think that he was making the stiff clubs vibrate on their stalks—their hinges, so to speak—in a manner that would tend to loosen the seeds as effectually, perhaps, as would tapping them.
"Judging by these limited observations, I should say that the nut-hatch was the most skilful of the three in extracting the seeds, as, on the two occasions when I saw him plainly, he flew away with a flake, soon (once almost immediately) after he had come. He looked more like a connoisseur, too, and his bill is much longer. He alone, as I should think, might possibly be able to drive it right down, so as to seize the actual seed. Yet he tapped the cone in the same quick manner as did the tit, nor did he appear to me to be probing it at such times. Moreover, I never observed him—any more than the others—to extract the seed independently of the flake."
Birds that are not tree-creepers will often behave very much as if they were so, and show different degrees of expertness in the art. It seems quite natural that a small bird, which habitually frequents trees, should sometimes cling to the trunk; but what surprises me is, that with so much raw material to have worked upon, nature should not have developed some of our small perching birds into actual tree-creepers. My observations on the blue-tit and the wren show, at least, that should anything occur to make it difficult for them to procure food in other ways, or should they (and this is easier to imagine) develop a partiality for some particular kind of insect or other creatures living in the chinks or under the bark of trees—say spiders, for instance, which are often to be found there in colonies—they would be all ready to become specialised experts. At least it appears to me so, and I think it the more curious because they do not seem often to practise what they can do so well. Here is my note, taken in October, when, perhaps, there would be a little more scarcity of the ordinary food of such birds, than in the spring and summer of the year.
"In a grove of Scotch firs this morning I noted, first a blue-tit, clinging to the trunk of one in the same manner as a nut-hatch or tree-creeper. Hardly had he flown off it when a wren flew to and commenced to ascend perpendicularly the trunk of a tree quite near me, flying thence to another which it also ascended, and so on from tree to tree. Afterwards, however, I was able to watch blue-tits acting in this manner for some little time, as well as quite closely, and I decided that they were the greater adepts of the two. They climbed the perpendicular or overhanging trunk with ease and swiftness, clinging to the roughnesses of the bark, at which they pecked from time to time, I imagine for insects. Usually they went straight upwards, but sometimes more or less slantingly. I also noted—and this I had not been able to do for certain in the wren—that they descended as well as ascended the trunks of the trees; but here the manner of progressing was not quite so scansorial, for it was with a little flutter. Whether they used the feet as well as the wings in the descent I could not actually see, but they kept quite near enough to the trunk to have done so. These little fluttering drops or drop-runs interested me very much. The bird never made them except whilst hanging on the trunk of the tree perpendicularly and head downwards, and when he stopped and clung to it again he was in precisely the same position. The drop each time might have been from four to six or seven inches. It never appeared to me to be more. Both the blue-tit, therefore, and the wren have acquired the habit of creeping about the trunks of trees, in search, presumably, of insects or spiders, as do the tree-creepers, woodpeckers, and nut-hatch. The former of them can descend the trunk, but not, it would appear, without the aid of its wings, either wholly or in part. For the wren, I saw him descend once, as I think, in a quick side-eye-shot; but some nettles intervened, and I cannot be sure."
"On the next morning I am at the same grove, and, about seven, a good many blue-tits fly into it, one of which is soon busily occupied on the trunk of a fir-tree. I now observe that this bird uses his wings even in ascending the trunk, for though he certainly crawls up it, yet he accompanies each fresh advance, after a pause, with a little flutter, and advance and flutter end commonly together, taking him but a very little way. A tree-creeper on the same tree, who moves deftly about, pressed much flatter to the trunk and never using his wings, gives a good opportunity of comparing the two birds—the professional and the amateur. Now, both according to my memory and my notes, the tits I saw yesterday did not flutter at all while ascending the tree—at any rate, that one which I saw quite close both ascending and descending, on which my note was principally based, did not; for though I saw others, this one gave me the best and longest view, and the only one of the descent. Had he fluttered in the ascent also, I must certainly have noted it, and I should not, then, have placed the two in such contradistinction. If an inference may be drawn from such limited observation, it, perhaps, is that this bird is in process of acquiring, or, at any rate, of perfecting, a habit, and that, therefore, all the individuals do not excel in it to an equal degree. The fact that I often watched and waited to see them practising the art again, but without success, may lend some colour to this. There was clinging sometimes, but not climbing."
In this competition, therefore, between the wren and the tit as tree-creepers, the tit bears off the bell; but later I had a better opportunity of observing the prowess of the latter bird, and, though I did not see it descend, yet in ease and deftness, length of time during which the part was assumed, and general fidelity of the understudy to the original, it must, I think, be pronounced the superior. It was early on a cold, rainy, cheerless morning towards the end of February, that I was so lucky as not to be in bed. I say—"Have, this morning, watched closely, and from quite near, a wren behaving just like a professional tree-creeper. It ascended the trunk of an alder, quickly and easily, and sometimes to a considerable height—twenty or thirty feet perhaps—beginning from the roots, and then flew down to the roots or base of the next one, and so on along a whole line of them. Up the sloping roots, or anywhere at all horizontal, it hopped along in the usual manner, but, when the trunk became perpendicular, it crept or crawled, just like a true tree-creeper.[1] I was, as I say, quite close, and watched it most attentively. It certainly—as far as good looking can settle it—did not assist itself with the wings. They remained close against the sides, or, if they moved at all, it was imperceptible to my eyes (which, by the way, are non-pareils). Nevertheless, at a later period—for I followed along the trees—when I watched it at only a few paces off, it as certainly appeared that it did use the wings, advancing up the trunk by flutterings, but these were so small and slight, and raised the bird so imperceptibly from the surface of the trunk, that it had all the while the appearance of creeping. As I was still closer to the bird during the latter part of my watching, it may be thought that this alone represents the actual fact; but, for my part, I cannot help thinking that my eyesight served me upon each occasion. If so, then here is more 'richness,' from a Darwinian point of view. The tits, it will be remembered, differed individually, but in this wren there was a personal variation. He could creep, in ascending, without using his wings, and generally did so; still he sometimes broke into a little flutter, which, in a more pronounced form, had been prevalent in his youth. His father always did it in this way, and there were very old wrens still living who only flew up a trunk. But this was thought very old-fashioned."
It will not be forgotten how this bird flew from the point which it had reached on one tree, right down to the roots of another, and ascended from these. The tree-creeper, when it flits from tree to tree, generally does so in a downward direction. If trees were of a uniform height, and if the bird usually ascended to the top, or nearly to the top, of each one in succession, one could see the rationale, or even the necessity, of this practice, for the tree-creeper does not—at least not usually—descend the trunk. But in a wood, the top of one tree may not represent half the height of another, and, moreover, a tree will often be abandoned by the bird when it has reached only a moderate height, or is still quite near to the ground; and it is not so easy to see how, under these circumstances, the above-mentioned habit should have arisen. But, now, if the forerunners of the tree-creeper had been birds accustomed to hop about on the ground, and to peer and pry amongst the projecting roots of trees, and if they had, from these, gradually ascended the trunk, getting back to them at first quite soon, but making longer and longer and more and more accustomed excursions, then we can understand how this habit might have become—as one may say—rooted, so as to continue after there was no longer any particular advantage in it. Now, however, it is beginning to weaken. I have on several occasions—which I duly noted down at the time—seen a tree-creeper fly from one tree to another, upon which it clung, in an upward direction. I have little doubt that what is now still a habit will come to be a preference merely, and that, in time, even this will cease to be discernible, and the bird be guided simply by circumstances.
It is said that the tree-creeper never descends the tree it is on, and, also, that it generally proceeds in a spiral direction, by which, I suppose, is meant that the line of its course winds round and around the trunk of the tree. This last, however, has not been quite my experience. I have watched the bird often and carefully, and I should say that a true spiral ascent by it is decidedly exceptional. Often one has alighted upon the tall stem of a Scotch fir, on the side away from me, and never come round into view at all. On other occasions, after some time, I have seen its tiny form outlined against the sky on one or other side of the trunk, considerably, higher up, and then, again, it has disappeared back, or flown to another tree. This can hardly be called a spiral ascent, and I have seen no nearer approach to one. Often, too, I have seen it mount quite perpendicularly for a considerable distance. To me it appears that the tree-creeper recollects, occasionally, that he ought to ascend a tree spirally, and begins to do so, but the next moment he forgets this tradition in his family, and creeps individually. One might expect, indeed, that insects or likely chinks for them would act as so many deflections from the path of spiral progress, which, as it seems likely, may have been originally adopted for the same reason and upon the same principle that a road is made to wind round a mountain instead of being carried up the face of it. But how is it, then, that the wren and the blue-tit ascend tree-trunks perpendicularly? for one would have thought that the less au fait a bird was, the more would the advantages of an easy gradient have forced themselves upon it. But these birds are still—sometimes, at any rate—aided by their wings, so that it would seem as though their tree-creeping had been developed, or was being developed, as an adjunct to tree-fluttering. Now, as it appears to me, though it might be easier for a bird to creep up a tree by going round it, it could more easily flutter up it perpendicularly,[2] in the way I have described, and, if so, we can understand a bird that is only in process of becoming a tree-creeper, commencing, as it were, at the most advanced end. For it would first have fluttered up perpendicularly, then have both crept and fluttered so, and finally, when it could creep without fluttering, it would do so at first on the old fluttering lines. Then it might begin to adopt the spiral method, but as the effort required became less and less, and structural modification—as seen, for example, in the shape and stiffness of the tail-feathers of the tree-creeper—came to its assistance, this would cease to be a help, and become a habit merely, and when once a habit has lost its rationale, it is in the way of being broken, even in good society. Thus the perpendicular ascents of the tree-creeper may be the final stage in a long process, and the return in ease to what was before done in toil.
The tree-creeper is assisted in its climbing by the stiff, pointed feathers of the tail, which act as a prop, and also by its small size, which may possibly have been partly gained by natural selection. The great green woodpecker is possessed of the first of these advantages, but not of the second, and it is, I believe, the case that he much more adheres to the spiral mode of ascent than does the tree-creeper, who, as it seems to me, has almost discarded it. It would be interesting, therefore, to observe if the smaller spotted woodpecker shows a greater tendency to deviate in this direction; but I have had no opportunity of doing this.
With regard to the other assertion—namely, that the tree-creeper never descends the trunk of the tree—this is at least not true without qualification, for I have seen it do so backwards, with a curious and, as it seemed to me, a quite special motion. It was quick and sudden, carrying the bird an inch or so down the trunk, when it ceased and was not repeated: a jerk, in fact, but of a much more pronounced character, made thus backwards, than any of the little forward jerks, in a toned—one might almost sometimes say a gliding—succession, of which the ordinary "creeping" consists. The first time I saw this action (to dwell upon) it constituted a perpendicular descent, but my eye was not full on the bird at the moment, so that I only observed it imperfectly. On the second occasion I saw it quite plainly, and this time the bird jerked itself sideways as well as downwards, stopping in the same abrupt manner, though whether it made two short quick jerks or only one, I could not be quite sure of I think it was two, but that only the last one gave the jerky effect. It would thus seem that the tree-creeper might really progress in this way, for some little while, if it wished to. The tail must almost of necessity be raised, or the stiff, pointed feathers would catch in the roughnesses of the bark; but, either from the quickness of the action, or the slight extent to which it was lifted, I did not notice this.
I have also seen the great green woodpecker make exactly this same motion, downwards and backwards, on the trunk to which he was clinging, so perhaps all true tree-creeping birds may be able to descend in this fashion, should they wish it, though to do so head first may be beyond the power, or rather the habit, of most of them. This, certainly, I have never seen the tree-creeper do, but I should not be at all surprised were I to, some day, and in describing the habits of any bird, "never"—excepting in extreme cases—is, in my opinion, a word that should never be used.
The tit, however, though only an amateur treecreeper, does, as we have seen, descend the trunk head downwards, showing, to this extent at least, a superiority over a much greater master of the art. But here we have the flutter, whether helped out by the use of the feet or not, and we can imagine that, as the bird became more and more a true creeper, and used the wings less and less, he might cease to descend, and only creep upwards. It must, however, be remembered that all the tits are accustomed to hang head downwards from twigs and branches in an uncommon degree, so that a member of the family, developing along these lines, might find it easier to descend the trunk, or make greater efforts to overcome the difficulty of doing so, than a bird whose habits in this respect were less pronounced. Tits perch more generally amongst the higher branches of trees, and have no particular habit of hopping about the ground or creeping over and about the tangle of a tree's projecting roots, which I have often watched wrens doing. Those which I saw tree-creeping did not fly—or at any rate I did not notice that they did—from the tree they were on, so as to alight upon another at a lower elevation, but they were hardly systematic enough to let one judge properly as to this. The wren, however, both in this respect and in its general façons d'agir, had a striking resemblance to the tree-creeper, with which bird—if I read the systematic tangle (I mean in print) aright—he is more closely related than are the tits.
"Howsoever these things be"—I fear I have dwelt too long upon them, but whole books are written upon a war or even a battle—the little tree-creeper is a very delightful bird to watch. Sometimes, on inclement winter days, one can come very near him, very near indeed, and almost forget the cold, the rain, the sleet, in his active busy little comfort. To see him then creeping like a feathered mouse over some stunted tree-trunk, and insinuating his slender, delicately-curved little bill into every chink and crevice of the bark—so busy, so happy, so daintily and innocently destructive! His head, which is as the sentient handle to a very delicate instrument, is moved with such science, such dentistry, that one feels and appreciates each turn of it, and, by sympathy, seems working oneself with a little probing sickle that is seen even when invisible, as is the fine wire or revolving horror in one's tooth, whilst sitting in the dreadful chair. After watching him thus—almost, sometimes, bending over him—I have broken off some pieces of bark, to form an idea of what he might be getting. A minute spider and a small chrysalis or two would be revealed, but there were, generally, many cocoon-webs of larger hybernating spiders, whilst empty pupa shells and other such debris suggested "pasture" sufficient to "lard" many "rother's sides." And again I wonder why there are not more professional tree-creepers, why countries so rich and defenceless are not more invaded, in the name of something or other high-sounding—evolution will here serve the turn. But, in spite of this abundance, the tree-creeper does not quite confine himself to searching the bark of trees, for I have seen him, on one occasion, dart suddenly out and catch a fly, or other insect, in the air, returning immediately afterwards to his tree again. To my surprise, I cannot find this in my notes, but, as my memory is quite clear upon the point, I mention it. This is another method of procuring food, which, as an occasional practice, is widely disseminated amongst our smaller birds, and here again one wonders why it has only become a fixed habit with the fly-catcher. However, I have seen a male chaffinch dash from the bank of a river and catch may-flies in mid-stream, sometimes a little and sometimes only just above the surface of the water, several times in succession, so that, in this case also, we see the possible beginnings of another species.
I have forgotten to admire the tree-creeper—I mean as a thing of beauty. To do so is a very refined sensation, he is so neutral-tinted and halfshady. One is an æsthete for the time, but the next blue-tit dethrones one, for one has to admire him too, and he, with his briskness and his Christian name of Tom, is hardly æsthetic. The hardiness of these little creatures—I am speaking here of the tits, but to both it would apply—is wonderful—quite wonderful. They are downy iron, soft little colour-flakes of nature's very hardest material. It is now—for I select a striking example—the most atrocious weather, a howling wind, and sleet or sleety snow that seems, as it falls, to thaw and freeze upon one's hands, both at the same time. Later it becomes almost a storm, with more snow. It is, indeed, a day terrible to bird and beast in the general, as well as to man, yet, through it all, these tiny little bits of natural feather-work are feeding on the small February buds of some elms that roar in the wind. Wonderful it is to see them blown and swayed about, with the snow-flakes whirling about them, as they hang high up from the extremities of slender twigs, playing their little life-part (as important in the sum of things as Napoleon's) with absolute ease and well-being, whilst one is almost frozen to look at them. One must think of Shakespeare's lines about "the wet shipboy in a night so rude," but what a poor mollycoddle was he by comparison! Later they will sleep—these robust little feathered Ariels—to the tempest's lullaby, above a world all snow, and with frozen snow the whole way up the trunk of every unprotected tree, on the windward side. Now it is dinner, with appetite and entire comfort "in the cauld blast."
What insects are in these tiny little new buds, or are there insects in each one?—for these tits browse from one to another and seem equally satisfied with all. Yet it is authoritatively stated that they eat only the insects in buds, and not the buds themselves. In watching birds, however, as in other things, one should be guided by a few simple rules, and one of the most important of these is absolutely to ignore all statements whatever, without the smallest regard to authority. Everything should be new to you; there should be no such thing as a fact till you have discovered it. Note down everything as a discovery, and never mind who knew it—or knew that it was not so—before. You may be wrong, of course. So may the authority. But what makes authority in a matter of observation?
To me it certainly seemed that these tits ate the elm-buds. At any rate, I have broken a spray off a low bough where I had seen one feeding, and taken it home. On examining it I found many a little bare stalk where buds had been, which suggests that they had been eaten and not merely pecked at. I tried several of these little buds (it was in February) myself, and found them very nice and delicate. Later, in April, I have noted down:
"The buds being now larger, I can see the birds pecking and tugging at them more plainly, and now and then a minute bud-leaf flutters to the ground. I certainly think it is the buds themselves they are attacking, for their own sake." As blue-tits feed at the stacks—certainly not on insects—and eat cocoanuts. Brazil-nuts, horse-chestnuts (I believe), meat, and, in fact, almost everything, it would be strange indeed if they neglected such a rich pasture-ground as the buds of trees would yield them, or if they did not care about them. On such a day as I have described, one can understand them feeding hour after hour, and making themselves rotund on the tiny little buds themselves, but hardly on insects contained in them.
The bullfinch, at any rate, is known to be a budeater, and he may often be seen feeding on the elms, in company with the blue-tit, and, to all appearance in just the same way. It is marvellous what slender little twigs this bird will perch on, without their giving way beneath his round burly form. Sometimes they do give way, and then he swings about on them like a ball at the end of a piece of string, nor does he get off on to another one without a good deal of turmoil, and some climbing, which cannot be called quite fairy-like. In fact, he is awkward—but in the most graceful manner imaginable. Harpagon, as we know, "avait grace a tousser," and when a bird like the bullfinch condescends, for a moment, to be awkward, his charm is merely enhanced. Yet I cannot call him deft in the procurement of buds, as the blue-tit is, with whom he comes into competition, and whom he will drive away. He does not hang nibbling at them head downwards, as though to the manner born, and then swing up again on a twig-trapeze. These things, if not beyond him, are, at least, alien to his disposition, which is straightforward, and to his deportment, which has a certain sobriety. His plan, therefore, is to advance along the twig as far as it seems to him advisable to go, and then, stretching forward and elongating his neck, take a sharp bite at the bud, which, with his powerful bill, secures it at once—unless he fails. In the same way, he will stretch out from the twig he is on, to secure the bud on another, but this he does still more cautiously. At the blue-tit, when feeding on the same tree, he will sometimes make little dashes, driving him away. He has, in fact, just done so (only in this instance it was the hen bird) three times in succession. And now a fourth time has this hen bullfinch made a dash at the blue-tit. The tit, each time, flutters away easily, and without making any fuss about it. He is insulted, but he does not wish to make a scene. Besides, he is smaller.
The catkins, too, are now hanging on the alders, and on these also, or—if any one prefers it—on the insects in them, the blue-tits feed. They, I think, prefer the catkins, but I will not be sure.
Whenever practicable they grasp a catkin with one claw, and the twig from which it hangs, and which is their main support, with the other. Often, however, they grasp catkin and twig together with both claws, and, standing thus, peck down upon them like ("parva si magnis licet comparare") a crow or hawk upon some dead or living creature. Or, again, they will hang head downwards from, and pecking at, a bunch of the catkins, without any more substantial support, or, with one claw grasping one twig, will, with the other, hold a catkin belonging to another twig up to the beak, like a parrot. The claws of tits are evidently of high value as seizers and holders, if not quite as "pickers and stealers." They are much more than mere rivets for fixing themselves on a perch. To see one of these little birds, whilst straddled in this way, pull the catkin towards it, is most interesting and very pretty. The little legs are so thin and delicate that one must be very close or get a very steady look through the glasses, both to see, and, at the same time, distinguish them from the twigs.
The coal-tit is even more parrot or, rather, squirrel-like, and one can make out his actions better, for he sits upright—one may almost say—on the ground beneath a fir-tree, supporting himself with his tail and one claw, whilst the other grasps a fir-cone at which he pecks. At least I think it was a fir-cone, and I afterwards picked up several which were marked with little pits round the base, where it had joined the stalk, difficult to attribute to squirrels, and suggesting that the birds had severed them in this way, and not yet proceeded farther.
If the coal-tit does this, then it seems likely that the great-tit does so also, in which case his extracting the seeds from the larger cones of exotic firs would be only what one might expect. The coal-tit, too, ascends the trunks of trees—Scotch fir-trees especially—in the same fluttering way as does the blue-tit, but perhaps still more deftly, in search of insects, and often, as one watches him, a flake of the bark that he has detached comes fluttering down. The golden-crested wren may do the same, but I have been more struck by the way in which this little bird flies about amidst the pine-trees, from one needle-bunch to another. He hangs from them head downwards, but often, before clinging amongst them, flutters just above or, sometimes, just below them. In the latter case it seems as though the needles were flowers, and that he was probing them with his bill, whilst hanging in the air like a hummingbird; and this, amidst the dark pines and, especially, on a gloomy winter's day, is odd to see. Often he flits down from his pine-needles into the coarse, tufty grass just bounding the plantation, bustles and fairy-fusses there for a little, then is up again amongst his needles, pecking the frost from them. For this is what it looks like, that seems to be the meal he is making, though, surely, it must really be something more substantial—if "meal" and "substantial" are words that can be properly used in respect of a being so tiny and delicate. However, he seems busily examining the pine-needles, and this may be either for minute insects upon them, or for the very small buds which they bear. It is pleasant to watch these little birds, and to hear their little needley note of "tzee, tzee, tzee." Sometimes, however—but this is more as spring comes on—they will fly excitedly about amidst the trees and bushes, uttering quite a loud, chattering note—far louder than one could have expected from the size of the bird.
Returning to our blue-tits on their alder-tree; they have all flown into it—being a band of about twenty—from a small hawthorn-tree a few paces off. Excepting for some lichen here and there on its branches, this hawthorn-tree is bare, and the birds seem far more occupied in preening themselves, and in giving every now and again the little birdy wipe of the bill first on one side and then another of a twig or bough, than in any serious "guttling." For this they fly to the alder, where, at once, they are feeding busily. But I notice that every now and again some few of them fly back into the hawthorn, where they sit, a little, preening themselves as before, before returning. In fact, they use the hawthorn-tree as their tiring-room, whilst the alder is the great banqueting-hall. Once or twice—I think it was twice—I saw one dart at another and drive it from its particular catkin. As they had a whole large tree to themselves, this, I think, was pretty good.
But I have never seen the blue-tit behave so prettily and airily with its catkins, as I have the little willow-warbler in April. These little birds are then constantly pursuing each other about through the trees, and especially the birch-trees, for which they seem to have a decided preference, perhaps because they make a fairy setting for their fairy selves.
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They affect its catkins, and one of the most pleasing of things is to see them shoot through the yet thin veil of green, give a flying peck at one, and become immediately enveloped in a little yellow cloud of the pollen. It looks, indeed, as if the bird had shaken it from its own feathers, for its intimate actions are too quick and small to be followed, and the pollen is all around it. But as the eye marks the tiny explosion with delight, reason, quickly following, as delightedly tells you the why of it, and a plucked catkin illustrates.
This is all in the early fresh morning, when the earth is like a dew-bath and all the influences so lovely that one wonders how sin and sorrow can have entered into such a world. It seems as though nature must be at her fairest for so fairy a thing to be done. I, at least, have not seen it take place later, and I cannot help hoping that no one else will.
But why do the little birds explode their catkins? Do their sharp eyes, each time, see an insect upon them, or do they really enjoy the thing for its own sake? I can see no reason why this latter should not be the case, or, even if it is not so to any great degree now, why it should not come to be so in time. It must be exciting, surely, this sudden little puff of yellow pollen-smoke, and then there is the fairy-like beauty of it. There was much laughter, naturally, when Darwin propounded the theory that birds could admire, and when he instanced the bowerbirds, and, particularly, one that makes itself an attractive little flower-garden, removing the blossoms as soon as they fade, and replacing them with fresh ones, it was held that such cases as these were decisive against his views. Gradually, however, it began to be seen that they pointed rather in the opposite direction, and now it is recognised that Darwin was right. This being so, it does not appear to me absolutely necessary to suppose that when the little wood-warbler flies at his catkin and produces one of the prettiest little effects imaginable, he does so always merely to get a fly or a gnat. There are other possibilities, and I think that if our common birds were minutely and patiently watched, we might trace here and there in their actions the beginnings of some of those more wonderful ones, which obtain amongst birds far away.
