Edmund Selous

“ In the former a pair will keep crossing and recrossing as they scud about, or they will sweep towards and then away from each other in the softest and prettiest manner imaginable, or each will sweep first up to a height and then swiftly down again and skim quite low along the ground, thus delighting the eye with the contrast. Their flight is all in graceful sweeps, for even when they beat the air with their slender, pointed pinions, it is rather as though they kissed than beat it, and they seem all the while to be sweeping on without effort, so soft is their motion. ”

“ There is a sinking towards it of one of the dark shadows—swift beyond telling, but so soft that the speed is not realised—the object is covered, lost, and almost with a jerk, the eye—or rather the brain—realises that it has been caught in the descent. Empty, and now unregarded, the robbed bird sweeps on, the pirates sweep back to the heather, the cloud of witnesses disperse themselves, and, as with us each day, each hour, things smooth themselves again over the high-placed acts of successful villainy. ”

“ Sometimes he dips so smoothly and still-ly down that one seems hardly to miss him from where he was; there is just a swirl on the stream—which seems, now, to represent him—and that all but silent sound, so cool and pleasant, as of water sucked down into water. Or, swimming smoothly down the current, he stops suddenly, brings the neck stiffly and straightly forward, with eye fixed intently, severely on the water—piercing down into it as though making a point—and then down he goes with a click, almost a snap, flirting the water-drops up into the air with his tiny little mite of a tail. ”

“ There is a sameness and yet a constant difference in the aerial sports and evolutions of peewits. It is like a continual variation of the same air or a recurrent thread of melody winding itself through a labyrinth of ever-changing notes. Parts of the melody are where two skim low over the ground in rapid pursuit of each other. One settles, the other skims on, then makes a great upward sweep, turns, sweeps down and back again, again rises, turns and sweeps again, and so on, rising and falling over the same wide space with the regular motions and long rushing swing of a pendulum. ”

“ If life is, as some hold it to be, a vast melancholy ocean over which ships more or less sorrow-laden continually pass and ply, yet there lie here and there upon it isles of consolation on to which we may step out and for a time forget the winds and waves. One of these we may call Bird-isle—the island of watching and being entertained by the habits and humours of birds—and upon this one, for with the others I have here nothing to do, I will straightway land, inviting such as may care to, to follow me. ”

“ Sometimes a bird will come flying alone, somewhat low over the ground, in a hurrying manner, very fast, and making a sound with the wings, as they beat the air, which is almost like the puffing of an engine—indeed, one may easily, sometimes, imagine a train in the distance. As one watches him thus scudding along, tilting himself as ever, now on one side, now on another, all at once he will give a sharp turn as if about to make one of his wide, sweeping circles, but almost instantly he again reverses, and sweeps on in the same direction as before. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But as the evening falls and the air cools, they cast off their lassitude, think of the joys of the night, there is dance and song for a little, and then forth they fly. Sad and wailing as are their notes to our ears, they are no doubt anything but so to the birds themselves, and as the accompaniment of what seems best described by the word "dance" may, perhaps, fairly be called "song." The chants of some savages whilst dancing, might sound almost as sadly to us, pitched, as they would be, in a minor key, and with little which we would call an air. ”

“ Not less beautiful is the nuptial flight of the wood-pigeon. Of this, the clapping of the wings above the back is the most salient feature, a sound which is never heard during the winter or after the breeding-season is fairly over. In full flight, the bird smites its wings two or three times smartly together above the back, then, holding them extended and motionless, it seems to pause for one instant—if there can be pause in swiftest motion—before sinking and then rising and sinking again, as does a wave, or as though it rested on an aerial switchback. ”

“ In every one of those dark, swaying, sighing trees, there will be a very crowd of black, noisy, joyous birds, and strange it is that there should be more poetry in all this noise and clamour and bustle than in their sad sombreness, deeply as that speaks to one. The poetry of life is beyond that of death, and when the rooks have gone the dark plantation seems to want its soul. ”

“ The birds are standing in a long, straggling line, ganglion-like in form, swelling out into knots where they are grouped more thickly with thinner spaces between. As they preen themselves—twisting the neck to one or the other side so as to pass the primary quill feathers of the wings through the beak—one may be seen to stoop and lay one side of the head on the ground, the great yellow eye of the other side staring up into the sky in an uncanny sort of way. ”

“ Just as in the dull plumage of female pheasants and other birds, the males of which are splendidly adorned, or in both the sexes of some species belonging to the same families, we see the early state of their common, plain progenitors, so, in song-birds, the uninspired, workaday voice of call-note or twitter—the spoken language, as one may call it—probably represents the humble roots from which the various trees of song, with all their diversified branchings, and fluttering, trembling leaves, have shot up, beautifully, into the sky. ”

“ Joyous voices—innumerable multitudes—a torrent of wings! All in a broad, rapid, streaming flight to the larches. They sweep, dash, circle and eddy over them, black flashes in the deepening gloom. They sweep into them, and the snow, swept by their [Pg 281] wings, falls in a drizzle from the branches. Joyous, excited cries, 'chu, chu, chac, chac.' The whole dark grove is a cry, a music. Still other bands, they burden the air. Band after band—now with a pause between each. They fly swiftly and steadily up, at a not much greater height than the trees, not descending into them out of the sky. ”

“ If the courting of the female stock-dove by the male whilst on the ground, or amongst the branches of a tree, is of a somewhat heavy nature—more pompous than beautiful—as is, I think, the case, it is lightened in the most graceful manner by the aerial intermezzos—the broidery of the theme—which charmingly relieve and set it off; for often, "after bowing and walking together a little, near, but not touching—a Hermia and Lysander distance—both rise, both mount, attain a height, then pause, and, as from the summit of some lofty precipice, descend on outspread joy-wings in a very music of motion. ”

“ Though each pair of birds excavate their own tunnel, yet the whole community, or, at any rate, a large proportion of it, will sometimes work together, sweeping on to the pit's face in a body, clinging there and burrowing, with a constant twittering, then darting off silently in a cloud and sailing and circling round in the pit's amphitheatre, making, when the sky is blue and the sun bright, a warm and delicious picture such as the Greeks must have loved to gaze on. ”

“ Their mode of alighting on the ground after flight is very pretty, for they do so as if they meant to continue flying. Sometimes the wings are still raised, still make their little spear-points in the air as they softly stop; or the bird will hold them drooped and but half-spread, and skim like this, just above the ground. At once he is on it, but there has been no jerk, no pause. He has been smooth in abruptness: settling suddenly, there has been no sudden motion. These things are as magic,—they are, and yet they cannot be. ”

“ When I speak of the rookery I do not mean the trees where the birds build—unfortunately there are none very near me—but those where they come to roost during the autumn and winter—true rookeries indeed if numbers count for anything. Here, their chosen resting-place is a silent, lonely plantation of tall funereal firs, standing shaggily tangled together, mournful and sombre, making, when the snow has fallen but lightly—before they are covered—a blotch of very ink upon the surrounding white. ”

“ Who could think, seeing them during the daytime, so sad and abandoned, so utterly still, tenanted only by a few silent-creeping tits, or some squirrel, whose pertness amidst their gloomy aisles and avenues seems almost an affectation—who could think that each night they were so clothed and mantled with life, that their sadness was all covered up in joy, their silence made a babel of sound? ”

“ All the splendid birds keep scratching backwards in the chaff-heap as do fowls, sending up clouds of it into the air. Like the partridges, too, they utter, from time to time, a variety of curious, low notes, which, unless one were quite near, one would never hear, and once they make a quick little piping sound, all together, standing and lifting up their heads to do it, as though filled with mutual satisfaction and a friendly feeling. ”

“ Of course, a bird, if really in distress, can always fly down from the ledge into the sea, and this it is often forced to do if it has been standing near the edge when the combat broke out. The better-placed bird seems then to recognise its advantage, and presses boldly forward upon the other. There is a short retreat, a recognition of the danger and vigorous rally, another forced step backwards, an ineffectual whirring of wings on the extreme brink, and, turning in the moment of falling, the discomfited one renounces all further effort and plunges into the abyss. ”

“ Looking down from the cliffs into the quiet pools and inlets, one can see these little birds—the dabchicks of the ocean—swimming under water and using their wings as paddles, perfectly well. Instantly on diving they become of a glaucous green colour, and are then no longer like things of this world, but fanciful merely, suggesting sprites, goblins, little subaqueous bottle imps, for their shape is like a fat-bodied bottle or flat flask. Great green bubbles they look like, and so too but—larger and still greener—do the eider-ducks. ”

“ Much as before, but two birds are, I think, cosseting. Though one can read and write with ease, and see all objects—even birds sitting or flying a long way off—still it is all gloom and yellow murkiness. Light seems gone, though there be light. It is 'darkness visible,' indeed, neither true night nor true day, but more like night than day. The great shapes of cliff and hill seem drawn in gloom clearly, the sea gleams dimly and duskily, all is weird, strange, and portentous. ”

“ When thus disporting, each within its own charmed circle, the downward rush and bleat of one snipe will often for a long time immediately precede or follow that of another, bleat answering to bleat, till at length the duet is broken and complicated by a third intermingling voice. At last a bird, trampling on etiquette, will flit into the circle of the one you are watching, and the two, excitedly pursuing each other with "chack-wood, chack-wood," or, with the harsh, wild scream and loud swish of pinions, will speed off and vanish together. ”