W. H. Hudson

“ Exile and captivity have taken all joyousness from the noble singer, and a moist climate has made him hoarse; the long clear strains are no more, and he hurries through his series of confused shrieks as quickly as possible, as if ashamed of the performance. A lark singing high up in a sunny sky and a lark singing in a small cage hanging against a shady wall in a London street produce very different effects; and the spluttering medley of shrill and harsh sounds from the street singer scarcely seems to proceed from the same kind of bird as that matchless melody filling the blue heavens. ”

“ Wrens and mocking-birds have melody for their chief attraction, and the name of each kind is, to our minds, also the name of a certain kind of sweet music; we think of swifts and swallows in connection with the mysterious migratory instinct; and humming-birds have a glittering mantle, and the miraculous motions necessary to display its ever-changing iridescent beauty. In like manner, the homely Dendrocolaptidae possess the genius for building, and an account of one of these small birds without its nest would be like a biography of Sir Christopher Wren that made no mention of his works. ”

“ A score of hummingbirds, of as many distinct species, are less to the student of habits than one little brown-plurnaged bird haunting his garden or the rush-bed of a neighbouring stream; and, doubtless, for a reason similar to that which makes a lovely human face uninformed by intellect seem less permanently attractive than many a homelier countenance. He grows tired of seeing the feathered fairies perpetually weaving their aerial ballet-dance about the flowers, and finds it a relief to watch the little finch or wren or flycatcher of shy temper and obscure protective colouring. ”

“ How strange that this most cunning, bold, and bloodthirsty of the Felidae, the persecutor of the jaguar and the scourge of the ruminants in the regions it inhabits, able to kill its prey with the celerity of a rifle bullet, never attacks a human being! Even the cowardly, carrion-feeding dog will attack a man when it can do so with impunity; but in places where the puma is the only large beast of prey, it is notorious that it is there perfectly safe for even a small child to go out and sleep on the plain. ”

“ Walking in some open forest glade, he may look up just in time to see a great strange butterfly--a blue Morpho, let us say, wandering in some far country where this angel insect is unknown--passing athwart his vision with careless, buoyant flight, the most sylph-like thing in nature, and all blue and pure like its aerial home, but with a more delicate and wonderful brilliance in its cerulean colour, giving such unimaginable glory to its broad airy wings ”

“ The best known of these dying or burial-places are on the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gallegos rivers, where the river valleys are covered with dense primeval thickets of bushes and trees of stunted growth; there the ground is covered with the bones of countless dead generations. "The animals," says Darwin, "in most cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and among the bushes." A strange instinct in a creature so preeminently social in its habits; a dweller all its life long on the open, barren plateaus and mountain sides! ”

“ Rhea-hunting with the bolas, on a horse possessing both speed and endurance, and trained to follow the bird in all his quick doublings, is unquestionably one of the most fascinating forms of sport ever invented, by man. The quarry has even more than that fair chance of escape, without which all sport degenerates into mere butchery, unworthy of rational beings; moreover, in this unique method of hunting the ostrich the capture depends on a preparedness for all the shifts and sudden changes of course practised by the bird when closely followed, which is like instinct or intuition ”

“ Doubtless all birds were originally plain-coloured, without ornaments and without melody, and it is assumed that so it would always have been in many cases but for the action of this principle, which, like natural selection, has gone on accumulating countless small variations, tending to give a greater lustre to the species in each case, and resulting in all that we most admire in the animal world--the Rupicola's flame-coloured mantle, the peacock's crest and starry train, the joyous melody of the lark, and the pretty or fantastic dancing performances of birds. ”

“ Nevertheless, in September, and even as early as August, they begin to arrive on the pampas, the golden plover often still wearing his black nuptial dress; singly and in pairs, in small flocks, and in clouds they come--curlew, godwit, plover, tatler, tringa--piping the wild notes to which the Greenlander listened in June, now to the gaucho herdsman on the green plains of La Plata, then to the wild Indian in his remote village; and soon, further south, to the houseless huanaco-hunter in the grey wilderness of Patagonia. ”

“ Like immortal flowers they have drifted down to us on the ocean of time, and their strangeness and beauty bring to our imaginations a dream and a picture of that unknown world, immeasurably far removed, where man was not: and when they perish, something of gladness goes out from nature, and the sunshine loses something of its brightness. Nor does their loss affect us and our times only. The species now being exterminated, not only in South America but everywhere on the globe, are, so far as we know, untouched by decadence. ”

“ All birds that happen to be on the wing drop down as if shot into the reeds or water; ducks away from the margin stretch out their necks horizontally and drag their bodies, as if wounded, into closer cover; not one bird is found bold enough to rise up and wheel about the marauder--a usual proceeding in the case of other hawks; while, at every sudden stoop the falcon makes, threatening to dash down on his prey, a low cry of terror rises from the birds beneath ”

“ Strange eerie voices have all these birds. Of the remaining aquatic species, the most important is the spur-winged crested screamer; a noble bird as large as a swan, yet its favourite pastime is to soar upwards until it loses itself to sight in the blue ether, whenca it pours forth its resounding choral notes, which reach the distant earth clarified, and with a rhythmic swell and fall as of chiming bells. ”

“ To the free inhabitants of air we can only liken the mounted Arab, vanishing, hawklike, over the boundless desert.
In riding there is always exhilarating motion; yet, if the scenery encountered be charming, you are apparently sitting still, while, river-like, it flows toward and past you, ever giving place to fresh visions of beauty. Above all, the mind is free, as when one lies idly on the grass gazing up into the sky. ”

“ On warm bright days without wind, during the absence of the birds, I have frequently seen a company of from half a dozen to a dozen or fifteen of the parasitical fly wheeling about in the air above the nest, hovering and gambolling together, just like house-flies in a room in summer; but always on the appearance of the birds, returning from their feeding-ground, they would instantly drop down and disappear into the nest. ”

“ When the individuals of a herd or family are excited to a sudden deadly rage by the distressed cries of one of their fellows, or by the sight of its bleeding wounds and the smell of its blood, or when they see it frantically struggling on the ground, or in the cleft of a tree or rock, as if in the clutches of a powerful enemy, they do not turn on it to kill but to rescue it. ”

“ To swell its grey thread-like abdomen to a coral bead is a delight to the insect, but not necessary to its existence, like food and water to ours; it is the great prize in the lottery of life, which few can ever succeed in drawing. ”

“ They are nature's miserable castaways, parasitical tribes lost in a great dry wilderness where no blood is; and every marsh-born mosquito, piping of the hunger gnawing its vitals, and every forest tick, blindly feeling with its grappling-irons for the beast that never brushes by, seems to tell us of a world peopled with gigantic forms, mammalian and reptilian, which once afforded abundant pasture to the parasite, and which the parasite perhaps assisted to overthrow. ”

“ It is an instinct of animals like wolves and peccaries to devour the enemy they have overcome and slain: thus, when the jaguar captures a peccary out of a drove, and does not quickly escape with his prize into a tree, he is instantly attacked and slain and then consumed, even to the skin and boues. This is the wolf's and the peccary's instinct; and the devouring of one of their own companions is an inevitable consequence of the mistake made in the first place of attacking and killing it. In no other circumstances, not even when starving, do they prey on their own species. ”

“ But we are familiar with the truth that in organic nature great things result from small beginnings--a common flower, and our own bony skulls, to say nothing of the matter contained within them, are proofs of it. Only a limited number of species sing in a highly finished manner. Looking at many species, we find every gradation, every shade, from the simple joyous chirp and cry to the
Music and Dancing in Nature. ”

“ When the favourite food of any one of these species is plentiful in any particular region all the individuals that discover it remain, and attract to them all of their kind passing overhead. This happens on the pampas with the stork, the short-eared owl, the hooded gull and the dominican or black-backed gull--the leading species among the feathered nomads: a few first appear like harbingers; these are presently joined by new comers in considerable numbers, and before long they are in myriads. Inconceivable numbers of birds are, doubtless, in these regions, continually passing over us unseen. ”

“ The forest at that season is vocal, not only with the fine melody of the true songsters, but with hoarse cawings, piercing cries, shrill duets, noisy choruses, drummings, boomings, trills, wood-tappings--every sound with which different species express the glad impulse; and birds like the parrot that only exert their powerful voices in screamings--because "they can do no other"--then scream their loudest. ”

“ They are very great in attitudes, and when one is approached it immediately throws itself back, like a pugilist preparing for an encounter, and stands up so erect on its four hind feet that the under surface of its body is displayed. Humble-bees are commonly supposed to carry the palm in attitudinizing; and it is wonderful to see the grotesque motions of these irascible insects when their nest is approached, elevating their abdomens and two or three legs at a time, so that they resemble a troupe of acrobats balancing themselves on their heads or hands, and kicking their legs about in the air. ”

“ The owls are few and all of wide-ranging species. The most common is the burrowing-owl, found in both Americas. Not a retiring owl this, but all day long, in cold and in heat, it stands exposed at the mouth of its kennel, or on the vizcacha's mound, staring at the passer-by with an expression of grave surprise and reprehension in its round yellow eyes; male and female invariably together, standing stiff and erect, almost touching--of all birds that pair for life the most Darby and Joan like. ”

“ The alarm-cry of this deer is a peculiar whistling bark, a low but far-reaching sound; but when approaching a doe with young I have never been able to hear it, nor have I seen any movement on the part of the doe. Yet it is clear that in some mysterious way she inspires the fawn with sudden violent fear; while the fawn, on its side, instead of being affected like the young in other mammals, and sticking closer to its mother, acts in a contrary way, and runs from her. ”

“ One morning in the month of October, the great breeding-time for birds in the Southern Hemisphere, while cautiously picking my way through a bed of eardoon bushes, the mysterious little creature flitted up and perched among the clustering leaves quite near to me. It uttered a feeble grasshopper-like chirp; and then a second individual, smaller, paler-coloured, and if possible shyer than the first, showed itself for two or three seconds, after which both birds dived once more into concealment. ”

“ On the open pampas, birds, which are not compelled to live concealed on the surface, can see each other at long distances, and perpetual calling is not needful: moreover, in that still atmosphere sound travels far. As a rule their voices are strangely subdued; nature's silence has infected them, and they have become silent by habit. This is not the case with aquatic species, which are nearly all migrants from noisier regions, and mass themselves in lagoons and marshes, where they are all loquacious together. ”

“ It comes in disagreeable whiffs to the human nostril when the perfumer of the wilderness is not even in sight. Yet it is not a protection; on the contrary, it is the reverse, and, like the dazzling white plumage so attractive to birds of prey, a direct disadvantage, informing all enemies for leagues around of its whereabouts. It is not, therefore, strange that wherever pumas are found, deer are never very abundant; the only wonder is that, like the ancient horse of America, they have not become extinct.
The gauchos of the pampas, however, give a reason for the powerful smell of the male deer ”

“ The abundance of cattle on the pampas has made it unnecessary to use the vizcacha as an article of food. His skin is of no value; therefore man, the destroyer of his enemies, has hitherto been the greatest benefactor of his species. Thus they have been permitted to multiply and spread themselves to an amazing extent, so that the half-domestic cattle on the pampas are not nearly so familiar with man, or so fearless of his presence as are the vizcachas. It is not that they do him no injury, but because they do it indirectly, that they have so long enjoyed immunity from persecution. ”

“ On the earth its air is grave and its motions measured and majestic, and it rises with immense labour, the wings producing a sound like a high wind. But as the bird mounts higher, sweeping round as it ascends, just as vultures and eagles do, it gradually appears to become more buoyant, describing each succeeding circle with increasing grace. ”

“ I was one day watching a flock of plovers, quietly feeding on the ground, when, in a moment, all the birds were seized by a joyous madness, and each one, after making a vigorous peck at his nearest neighbour, began running wildly about, each trying in passing to peck other birds, while seeking by means of quick doublings to escape being pecked in turn. This species always expresses its glad impulse in the same way ”

“ After the cow-bird has left the nest it is still stupidly tame, and more than once I have seen one carried off from its elevated perch by a milvago hawk, when, if it had understood the warning cry of the foster parent, it would have dropped down into the bush or grass and escaped. But as soon as the young cow-birds are able to shift for themselves, and begin to associate with their own kind, their habits change, and they become suspicious and wild like other birds. ”