W. Warde Fowler

“ This is the time when the second crop of grass is cut; and the mowing leaves a short and beautiful mossy golden turf, which shines brightly in the sun, and lies softly and smoothly where a pine or a boulder casts its shadow on the ground. The walk through the Gadmenthal up to the Susten Pass was one to be remembered for beauty, though not ornithologically productive. The only curiosity that I saw was a Creeper running up a house; a very natural proceeding on the part of the bird, where the houses are of wood, containing abundance of insects in the crannies. ”

“ As we travel up the valley to Engelberg, and in the higher portion of it in which Engelberg stands, a considerable variety of birds may be seen which are familiar to us as British species. The Whin-chat is nestling in the meadows, and swaying itself on the tops of the long grasses; our common English Redstart is seen here and there, but not often, on the walls and palings; the Creeper runs up the stems of the fruit-trees, and the Nuthatch has its nest in holes in the maple-trees, which in these valleys are of great size and beauty. ”

“ We cannot but pause again and again as we make our way through the gorse and brushwood, for the little Linnet in his full summer dress is hardly less beautiful than the Goldfinch, and all his ways and actions are no less cheering and attractive. The male birds differ much, perhaps according to age, in brilliancy of plumage; but a fine cock Linnet in full dress of crimson breast and crown, white wing-bars and tail-feathers, and chestnut back, is to my thinking as splendid a little bird as these islands can show. ”

“ In the willows and hazels among which this path winds, and also on the opposite side of the valley on the way to Rosenlaui, I have always heard a little warbler whose voice was quite strange to me. More than once I have done all I could to obtain a good sight of it; but the restless caprice of these little birds, who flit rapidly in and out of the bushes while the ornithologist waits with his head in a burning sun, only to lose sight of the tiny creature the moment the glass is upon him, defeated my purpose of finding out his species beyond the possibility of error ”

“ But as the heat increases, the birds begin to feel, as man does, that the shade of a thick wood is more oppressive than the bright sunshine of the meadows; and on a hot afternoon in July you may walk through the woodland and hardly catch a single note.
But on the outskirts of a wood, or in a grassy ‘ride,’ you may meet with life again. The Titmice will come crooning around you, appearing suddenly, and vanishing you hardly know how or whither; Wood-pigeons will dash out of the trees with that curious impetuosity of theirs, as if they were suddenly sent for on most pressing business. ”

“ And here, as I write, the sun has once more broken through the clouds, a bracing north wind blows, the mountains above us are covered with fresh snow, the trees are beginning to lose their summer green, the cow-bells are ringing in the valley instead of upon the alps, and alpine autumn is here in all its health and beauty. ”

“ A thousand times have I seen him on the old gray fern-covered walls of the Alpine passes, but never did I expect to see him on this hideous ‘improvement’ of civilization. Except that he was silent and alone, he seemed as much at home here as on the flowery slopes of the Engstlen-alp. There is nothing that man can erect that is too uncomely for the birds. ”

“ Missel-thrushes are also to be seen here; and all these birds go out of a morning to breakfast on a thickly-berried thorn-bush at the Cherwell end of the Broad Walk, where they meet with their relations the Redwings, and now and then with 31 a Fieldfare. The walker round the meadow in winter will seldom fail to hear the harsh call of the redwing, as, together with starlings innumerable, and abundance of blackbirds, they utter loud sounds of disapproval. There is one bush here whose berries must have some strange ambrosial flavour that blackbirds dearly love. ”

“ The 8 familiar pollards and thorn-bushes, where the Willow-warblers and Whitethroats were every morning to be seen or heard, are like so many desolate College rooms in the heart of the Long Vacation. Deserted nests, black and mouldy, come to light as the leaves drop from the trees—nurseries whose children have gone forth to try their fortune in distant countries. But we soon discover that things are not so bad as they seem. The silence is not quite unbroken: winter visitors arrive, and the novelty of their voices is cheering, even if they do not break into song ”

“ Its activity is neither grotesque nor playful, but seems to arise from a kind of nervous zeal, which is also characteristic of its song. If it perches for an instant on the gorse-bush beneath the hedgerow which borders the wood, it jerks its tail up, 163 expands its wings, and is off in another moment. If it alights on the ground, it rears up head and neck like a thrush, hops a few paces, listens, darts upon some morsel of food, and does not dally with it. As it sings, its whole body vibrates, and the soft neck feathers ripple to the quivering of the throat. ”

“ The Redstart was not a very common bird about us until about three years ago, but now its gentle song is heard in May in almost every garden and well-hedged field. In August and September the young birds are everywhere seen showing their conspicuous fire-tails as they flit in and out of the already fast-browning hedges ”

“ It was about the beginning of May, before the leaves had fully come out; a time which is very far the best in the year for observing the smaller and shyer birds. Intent on pairing or nest-building, they have little fear, if you keep quite quiet, and you can follow their movements with a glass without danger of losing sight of them in the foliage. I was returning from a delicious morning ramble through Bruerne wood, and was just rounding the last corner of it, where a small plantation of baby saplings was just beginning to put on leaf, when my ear caught the unmistakable ‘reel’ of this bird. ”

“ If I walk alongside of the railway, as it passes between the water-meadows and the corn-fields which lie above them, divided on each side from these by a low-lying withy-bed, I always keep an eye upon the telegraph-wires ahead, knowing by long experience that they will tell me what birds are breeding or have bred about here. ”

“ I believe that I have seen all the five English species here within a space of a very few days: English, not British, for there is one other, the Crested Tit, of which I shall have more to say in another chapter. A family of Longtails, or Bottle-tits, flits from bush to bush, never associating with the others, and so justifying its scientific separation from them. Another family is to be seen in the Parks, where they build a nest every year. These delightful little birds are however quite willing to live in the very centre of a town, indifferent to noise and dust. ”

“ The edge of a wood is the favourite place, because the bird constantly seeks 161 its food in the open; also perhaps because the best places for the nest are often in the depth of an overgrown hedge, where the cover is thicker than inside a wood. Sitting on the sunny side of such a wood, I have often had ample opportunity of hearing and watching a pair: for though always somewhat shy, they are not frightened at a motionless figure, and will generally show themselves if you wait for them, on some prominent bough or bit of railing, or as they descend on the meadow in quest of food. ”

“ But as I think of those delicious pastures, nestling under the solemn precipices, and studded in June with gentians, primulas, anemones, where each breath of crystal air is laden with the aromatic scent of Alpine herbage, I seem to hear one favourite song resounding far and near—a song given high in air, and often by an invisible singer; for so huge is the mass of mountain 94 around us, that he seldom projects himself against the sky in his flight, and may well escape the quickest eye. ”

“ One is apt to think of the Creeper as a silent and very busy bird, who never finds leisure to rest and preen his feathers, or to relieve his mind with song. When he does sing he takes us a little aback. One spring morning, as I was strolling in the Broad Walk, a Creeper flew past me and fixed himself on the thick branch of an elm—not on a trunk, as usual—and uttered a loud and vigorous song, something after the manner of the Wren’s. ”

“ No sooner does the summer begin to bring out the flies among our pollard willows, than they become alive with Sparrows. There you may see them, as you repose on one of the comfortable seats on the brink of the Cherwell in the Parks, catching flies in the air with a vigour and address which in the course of a few hundred years might almost develop into elegance. ”

“ A favourite plan of theirs is to utter their bright canary-like song from the very top twig of an elm, then to rise in the air, higher and higher, keeping up their energies by a quick succession of sweet shrill notes, till they begin to descend in a beautiful curve, the legs hanging down, the tail expanded and inclined upwards, and the notes getting quicker and quicker as they near the telegraph-wires or the next tree-top. ”

“ Of the birds just mentioned, the Swifts, Swallows, and Martins build, I need hardly say, in human habitations, the Sand-martins in some sand- or gravel-pit, occasionally far away from the river. The largest colony of these little brown birds, so characteristic of our Oxford summer, is in a large sand-pit on Foxcombe Hill: there, last July, I chanced to see the fledgelings peeping out of their holes into the wide world, like children gazing from a nursery window. The destruction all these species cause among the flies which swarm round Oxford must be enormous. ”

“ In plumage and song the two are not unlike, though the Alpine bird is rather larger and of a more variegated warm brown colouring: but I cannot help pausing for one moment to point out the remarkable instance that we have here of two very closely allied birds developing habits of life so entirely distinct,—the one being stationary, the other migratory; the one breeding in the road-side hedge where it lives all the year, and the other retreating to the highest limits of the Alpine pastures and making its nest in the holes of the rocks. ”

“ Seldom have I seen a more beautiful sight, unless it be a flight of Plover on English water-meadows, than the wavings and whirlings of a flock of Snow-finches, with their white feathers glistening in the sun one moment, while the next their black ones will show clear against the snow. ”

“ The Oxford Redstarts find convenient holes for their nests in the pollard willows which line the banks of the Cherwell and the many arms of the Isis. The same unvaried and unnatural form of tree, which looks so dreary and ghastly in the waste of winter flood, is full of comfort and adaptability for the bird in summer. The works of man, though not always beautiful, are almost always turned to account by the birds, and by many kinds preferred to the solitude of wilder haunts. ”

“ But they differ in two points: the strain of the Blackcap is shorter, forming in fact one lengthened phrase “in sweetness long drawn out,” while the Garden-warbler will go on almost continuously for many minutes together; and secondly, the Blackcap’s music is played upon a mellower instrument. The most gifted Blackcaps—for birds of the same species differ considerably in their power of song—excel all other birds in the soft quality of their tone, just as a really good boy’s voice, though less brilliant and resonant, excels all women’s voices in softness and sweetness. ”

“ And let me add, that any occupation which brings a foreigner into close contact with the more intelligent Swiss, especially at a time when they are not hard driven by the touring world of all nations, will give new life and interest to even the shortest visit to a country whose history and institutions are as wonderful as its scenery, or as its animal and vegetable life. We are apt to think of the Swiss as a self-seeking people, whose only object is to make capital out of the natural beauties of the extraordinary land they live in. ”

“ We have another much smaller bird in the village which can hold large objects between its mandibles—objects almost as large, and sometimes more bulky, than the egg of the Cuckoo. This is the Nuthatch, which will carry away from a window any number of hard dessert nuts, and store them up in all sorts of holes and corners, where they are sometimes found still unbroken. These plump and neat little birds, whose bills and heads and necks seem all of a piece, while their bodies and tails are not of much account, have been for years accustomed to come for their dinners to my neighbour’s windows. ”

“ Beyond that woodland lies a stretch of pasture land which brings you to the foot of the long ridge of hill forming the north-eastern boundary and bulwark of the Cotswolds, and hiding from us the little old-world towns of Burford and Northleach. We have therefore within a radius of five or six miles almost every kind of country in which birds rejoice to live. ”