Mary Howitt

“ Round the nest, as you see, blossoms the yellow furze, and round it too rises a chevaux de frise of furze spines, green and tender to look at, but sharp as needles. Yes, here on this furzy common, and on hundreds of others all over this happy land, and on hill sides, with the snowy hawthorn and the pink-blossomed crab-tree above them, and, below, the mossy banks gemmed with pale-yellow primroses, are thousands of linnet nests and father-linnets, singing for very joy of life and spring, and for the summer which is before them. ”

“ His are unpretending little songs of intense enjoyment, simple thanksgivings for the pleasures of life, for the little brown hen-bird, who has not a bit of scarlet in her plumage, and who sits in her snug nest on her fine little white eggs, with their circle of freckles and brown spots at the thicker end, always alike, a sweet, patient mother, waiting for the time when the young ones will come into life from that delicate shell-covering, blind at first, though slightly clothed in greyish-brown—five little linnets gaping for food. ”

“ The little brown nightingale, with his little brown wife in the thickety copse, with their simple unpretending nest, not built up aloft on the tree branch, but humbly at the tree’s root, or even on the very ground itself, may teach us that the world’s external show or costliness is not true greatness. The world’s best bird-singer might have been as big as an eagle, attired in colours of blue and scarlet and orange like the grandest macaw. ”

“ All these wild roses and honeysuckles, all this maiden hair, and this broad polypody, which grows golden in autumn, make up his little kingdom, in the very heart of which, under a ledge of rock, and within sound, almost within the spray of the waterfall, is built the curious little nest, very like that of a wren, in which sits the hen-bird, the little wife of the dipper, brooding with most unwearied love on four or five white eggs, lightly touched with red. ”

“ Gilbert White gave, I believe, the name of chiff-chaff to this little bird from its note. In the midland counties it is called the chill-chall from the same cause; and, indeed, this name is, to my ear, more accordant with its continuous ditty. Its cheery little voice is one of the pleasantest recognitions of returning spring. It is sure to be heard, just as in former years, in the copse, the dell, the belt of trees bordering a wayside; we catch its simple note with pleasure, for it brings with it many a memory of happy scenes and days gone by. ”

“ This nest is a wonderful little fabric, built of moss, dry grass, and slender roots, lined with hair, wool, and thistle-down; but the true wonder of the nest is the exact manner in which the outside is made to imitate the bough upon which it is placed. All its little ruggednesses and lichen growths are represented, whilst the colouring is so exactly that of the old apple-tree that it is almost impossible to know it from the branch itself. Wonderful ingenuity of instinct, which human skill would find it almost impossible to imitate! ”

“ The magpie again descends, steps slowly over the grassy margin of the yard, looking from side to side, stops, listens, advances rapidly by a succession of leaps, and encounters a whole brood of chickens, with their mother at their heels. If she had not been there he would have had a delicious feast of one of those chickens; but he dare not think of such a thing now, for, with fury in her eye, bristled plumage, and loud clamour, the hen rushes forward at him, overturning two of her younglings, and the enemy, suddenly wheeling round to avoid the encounter, flies off to his mate. ”

“ They lay down, in the first place, a sort of rude platform, upon which they erect a basket-like nest of more or less elegant design, a web of roots and dry twigs strongly woven together. The little golden-crested wren hangs her purse-like nest to a bough, and, as in the nursery song, “When the wind blows the cradle rocks.” An Australian bird, a kind of fly-catcher, called there the razor-grinder, from its note resembling the sound of a razor-grinder at work, builds her nest on the slightest twig hanging over the water, in order to protect it from snakes which climb after them. ”

“ Thus, the most admired of all singers—the subject of poets’ songs and eulogies, the bird that people walk far and wide to listen to, of which they talk for weeks before it comes, noting down the day of its arrival as if it were the Queen or the Queen’s son—is yet nothing but a little insignificant brown bird, not to be named with the parrot for plumage, nor with our little goldfinch, who always looks as if he had his Sunday suit on. ”

“ At once the birds cease their labour, pause for a moment, and fly off in succession. You observe how lightly and buoyantly they cleave the air, each fluttering its little wings, descending in a curved line, mounting again, and speeding along. Anon they alight in a little thicket of dried weeds, and, in settling, display to the delighted eye the beautiful tints of their plumage, as with fluttering wings and expanded tail, they hover for a moment to select a landing place amid the prickly points of the stout thistles whose heads are now bursting with downy-winged seeds. ”

“ But the great Creator willed that it should not be so—his strength, and his furiousness, and his cruel capacity were sufficient for the eagle, and his shining vestments for the macaw; whilst the bird to which was given the divinest gift of song must be humble and unobtrusive, small of size, with no surpassing beauty of plumage, and loving best to hide itself in the thick seclusion of the copse in which broods the little mother-bird, the very counterpart of himself, upon her olive-coloured eggs. ”

“ All these are woven and wrought together very compactly; not, however, without loose straws and little tangles of wool hanging about. Within is a smooth casing of mud, as in the nest of the throstle, and within that a second coating of dry grass. Our picture represents all as being now complete. The busy labours of the year are now over; the eggs, four or five in number, of a greenish-blue, marked with reddish spots, are laid, and the mother-bird has taken her patient seat upon them, whilst her mate, from the branch above, sings as if he never meant to leave off again. ”

“ On another occasion, the mother bird, trying this plan to no purpose, seemed to lose patience, and seizing one of them by the lower mandible, with the claw of her right foot, whilst it was gaping for food, tried to pull it out of the nest, to which, however, it clung like a squirrel. But the young, every one of them, fly in time, and a right joyous holiday they all have together. ”

“ As Luther, in a moment of despondency, when enemies were rife around him, and calumny and wrong pursued him, heard the glad song of a bird that came and sang on a bough before his window, we have thanked God for the lesson of the never-drooping chill-chall. The great world around never damps its joy with a sense of its own insignificance; the active and often showy life of man, the active and varied existence of even birds, which sweep through the air in gay companies, never disturb its pleasure in its little accustomed nook. ”

“ I am not aware of the height to which the lark soars, but it must be very great, as he becomes diminished to a mere speck, almost invisible in the blaze of light. Yet, high as he may soar, he never loses the consciousness of the little mate and the nestlings below: but their first cry of danger or anxiety, though the cry may be scarce audible to the human ear, thrills up aloft to the singer, and he comes down with a direct arrow-like flight, whilst otherwise his descent is more leisurely, and said by some to be in the direct spiral line of his ascent. ”

“ They are all alike in the purpose for which they are intended, but no two families of birds build exactly alike; all the wrens, for instance, have their kind of nest; the thrushes have theirs; so has the swallow tribe; so has the sparrow, or the rook. They do not imitate one another, but each adheres to its own plan, as God, the great builder and artist, as well as Creator, taught them from the very beginning. The first nightingale, that sang its hymn of joyful thanksgiving in the Garden of Paradise, built its nest just the same as the bird you listened to last year in the coppice. ”

“ The yellow-hammer does everything quietly, choosing his mate in an orderly way; and now that the buds are swelling on the trees, the primroses gemming the hedge-banks, and the golden catkins hanging on the willows by the watersides, hither come the little yellow-hammers, and, having selected some sweet, hidden spot, under a bush, or on the fieldy banks amongst the thick herbage—we see it a month later in our picture, when the buds have expanded into leaves, in a wild growth of beautiful grasses and herbage—begin to make their nest. ”

“ All the cares of life are now over, their young broods are around them, and now, with nothing to do but to enjoy themselves in the freedom of nature, where—on every hand, on every bush and tree, and in every outlying field—though the crops are now carried, all except, perhaps, here and there a solitary field in which the bean-shocks stand up black in the golden autumnal sunshine ”

“ Although there is so little to say about the bull-finch in his natural state—excepting that he is a handsome bird, with bright black eyes, a sort of rich black hood on his head; his back, ash-grey; his breast and underparts, red; wings and tail, black, with the upper tail-coverts white—yet when he has gone through his musical education, he is not only one of the most accomplished of song-birds, but one of the most loving and faithfully attached little creatures that can come under human care. These trained birds are known as piping bull-finches. ”

“ We see the little creature hopping along the boughs of the yet only budding oak, and know that it is as usefully employed for man as agreeably for itself. It tells us, in effect, that sunny days, [68] flowers, and sweet airs, and the music of a thousand other birds, are coming. We revert to the time when, tracing the wood-side or the bosky dingle in boyhood, we caught sight of its rounded nest amongst the screening twigs of the low bush, and the bleached bents of last year’s grapes. ”

“ The white-throat is an excitable little bird, rapid in all its movements; and though it will apparently allow a person to come near, it incessantly flits on, gets to the other side of the hedge, warbles its quaint little song, flies to a short distance, sings again, and so on, for a long time, returning in the same way. It erects the feathers of its head when excited, and swells its throat so much when singing, that the feathers stand out like a ruff, whence it has obtained the name of Muffety, or Charlie-mufty, in Scotland. ”

“ Daily Life of this Bird.
Like its relation, the linnet, it congregates in flocks as soon as its young can take wing, when they may be seen wheeling round in the pleasant late summer and autumn fields, full of life, and in the enjoyment of the plenty that surrounds them, in the ripened thistle-down, and all such winged seeds as are then floating in the air. ”

“ One of the most pleasing features of autumn is, to my mind, these flocks of kindred birds, which are at that time all abroad and yet together, circling in their flight, all rising as you approach, and wheeling away into the stubble-field, or into the distant hedges, now rich with their wild fruits—the blackberry, the wild rose hip, and the bunches of black-privet berries—and then away again, as you approach, with their variously modulated notes, through the clear air into the yet more distant stubble or bean-field. ”

“ In the freedom of nature he is the joyous minstrel of liberty and love, carrying upwards, and sending down from above, his buoyant song, which seems to fall down through the golden sunshine like a flood of sparkling melody. ”

“ The linnet, amongst singing birds, is what a song writer is amongst poets. He is not a grand singer, like the blackbird or the thrush, the missel-thrush or the wood-lark, all of which seem to have an epic story in their songs, nor, of course, like the skylark, singing up to the gates of heaven, or the nightingale, that chief psalmist of all bird singers. ”

“ Like the rook, the magpie inhabits the same nest for several years, perhaps for the whole of his life, putting it into repair every year before he again needs it for family use—like a wealthy country family taking possession of their ancestral mansion in the spring. ”

“ The cordage by which it is suspended is of his own weaving, and is made of the same materials as the nest, which are moss and slender thread-like roots. In form it is oval, as you see, with a hole for entrance at the side, and is lined with the softest down and fibrous roots. It is a lovely little structure, like a soft ball of moss, within which the mother-bird lays from six to a dozen tiny eggs, scarcely bigger than peas, the delicate shell of which will hardly bear handling. The colour of the egg is white, sprinkled over with the smallest of dull-coloured spots. ”

“ At this charming time of the year none of the various performers in nature’s great concert bring back to those who have passed their youth in the country a more delicious recollection of vernal fields and lanes than this bird of ours, the little white-throat. ”