Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Part 15

Another was the wren. Some would love the mite for pity sake. It is very pretty and very gay, and possesses a sweet little voice of its own; it needs care, however. It must not, on the one hand, be kept too near a fire or in too warm a room, and on the other it should be well covered up at night; a draught is fatal to such a bird. There is also the golden-headed wren, the smallest of our British birds, but I do not remember ever having seen one kept in a cage. There is no accounting for tastes, however. I knew a young lady in Aberdeen who kept a golden eagle in a cage of huge dimensions. He was the admiration of all beholders, and the terror of inquisitive schoolboys, who, myself among the number, fully believed he ate a whole horse every week, and ever so many chickens. While gazing at the bird, you could not help feeling thankful you were on the _outside_ of the cage. I admired, but I did not love him much. He caught me by the arm one day, with true Masonic grip--I loved him even less after that.

Wrens are fed in the same way as robins or nightingales are. In the wild state they build a large roundish nest, princ.i.p.ally of green moss outside, and with very little lining. There is just one tiny hole left in the side capable of admitting two fingers. Eggs about ten in number, very small, white, and delicately ticked with red. If I remember rightly, the golden wren's are pure white. The nests I have found were in bushes, holly, fir, or furze, or under the branches of large trees close to the trunk. The back of the nest is nearly always towards the north and east.

The stonechat or stone-checker is a nice bird as to looks, but possesses but little song. It would require the same treatment in cage or aviary as the robin. So I believe would the whinchat, but I have no practical knowledge of either as pets.

With the exception of the kingfisher, I do not recollect any British bird with brighter or more charming plumage, than our friend the goldfinch. He is arrayed in crimson and gold, black, white, and brown, but the colours are so beautifully placed and blended, that, rich and gaudy though they be, they cannot but please the eye of the most artistic. The song of the goldfinch is very sweet, he is with all a most affectionate pet, and exceedingly clever, so much so that he may be taught quite a number of so-called tricks.

In the wild state the bird eats a variety of seeds of various weeds that grow by the wayside, and at times in the garden of the sluggard.

Dandelion and groundsel seed are the chief of these, and later on in the season thistle seed. So fond, indeed, is the goldfinch of the thistle that the only wonder is that our neighbours beyond the Tweed do not claim it as one of _the_ birds of Bonnie Scotland, as they do the curlew and the golden eagle. But, on the other hand, they might on the same plea claim a certain quadruped, whose length of ear exceeds its breadth of intellect.

"Won't you tell us something," said Ida, "about the blackbird and thrush? Were they not pets of your boyhood?"

"They were, dear, and if I once begin talking about them I will hardly finish to-night."

"But just a word or two about them."

It is the poet Mortimer Collins that says so charmingly:

"All through the sultry hours of June, From morning blithe to golden noon, And till the star of evening climbs The grey-blue East, a world too soon, There sings a thrush amid the limes."

Whether in Scotland or England, the mavis, or thrush, is one of the especial favourites of the pastoral poet and lyrist. And well the bird deserves to be. No sweeter song than his awakes the echoes of woodland or glen. It is shrill, piping, musical. Tannahill says he "gars (makes) echo _ring_ frae tree to tree." That is precisely what the charming songster does do. It is a bold, clear, ringing song that tells of the love and joy at the birdie's heart. If that joy could not find expression in song, the bird would pine and die, as it does when caught, caged, and improperly treated. When singing he likes to perch himself among the topmost branches; he likes to see well about him, and perhaps the beauties he sees around him tend to make him sing all the more blithely. But though seeing, he is not so easily seen. I often come to the door of my garden study and say to myself, "Where can the bird be to-night?" This, however, is when the foliage is on orchard and oaks.

But his voice sometimes sounds so close to my ear that I am quite surprised when I find him singing among the boughs of a somewhat distant tree. This is my mavis, my particular mavis. In summer he awakes me with his wild lilts, long ere it is time to get up, and he continues his song "till the star of evening climbs the grey-blue East," and sometimes for an hour or more after that. I think, indeed, that he likes the gloaming best, for by that witching time nearly all the other birds have retired, and there is nothing to interrupt him.

In winter my mavis sings whenever the weather is mild and the gra.s.s is visible. But he does not think of turning up of a morning until the sun does, and he retires much earlier. I have known my mavis now nearly two years, and I think he knows me. But how, you may ask me, Frank, do I know that it is the selfsame bird. I reply that not only do we, the members of my own family, know this mavis, but those of some of my neighbours as well, and in this way: all thrushes have certain expressions of their own, which, having once made use of, they never lose. So like are these to human words, that several people hearing them at the same time construe them in precisely the same way. My mavis has four of these in his vocabulary, with which he constantly interlards his song, or rather songs. They form the choruses, as it were, of his vocal performances. The chorus of one is, "Weeda, weeda, weeda;" of another, "Piece o' cake, piece o' cake, piece o' cake;" of the third, "Earwig, earwig, earwig;" and of the last, sung in a most plaintive key, "Pretty deah, pretty deah, pretty deah."

"That is so true," said Ida, laughing.

On frosty days he does not sing, but he will hop suddenly down in front of me while I am feeding the Newfoundlands.

"You can spare a crumb," he says, speaking with his bright eye; "grubs are scarce, and my poor toes are nearly frozen off."

Says the great lyrist--

"May I not dream G.o.d sends thee there, Thou mellow angel of the air, Even to rebuke my earthlier rhymes With music's soul, all praise and prayer?

Is that thy lesson in the limes?"

I am lingering longer with the mavis than probably I ought, simply because I want you all to love the bird as I love him. Well, then, I have tried to depict him to you as he is in his native wilds; but see him now at some bud-seller's door in town. Look at his drooping wings and his sadly neglected cage. His eyes seem to plead with each pa.s.ser-by.

"Won't _you_ take me out of here?" he seems to say, "nor you, nor you?

Oh! if you would, and were kind to me, I should sing songs to you that would make the green woods rise up before you like scenery in a beautiful dream."

The male thrush is the songster, the female remains mute. She listens.

The plumage is less different than in most birds. The male looks more pert and saucy, if that is any guide.

The mavis is imitative of the songs of other birds. In Scotland they say he _mocks_ them. I do not think that is the case, but I know that about a week after the nightingales arrive here my mavis begins to adopt many of their notes, which he loses again when Philomel becomes mute.

And I shouldn't think that even my mavis would dare to mock the nightingale.

I have found the nest of the mavis princ.i.p.ally in young spruce-trees or tall furze in Scotland, and in England in thick hedges and close-leaved bushes; it is built, of moss, gra.s.s, and twigs, and clay-lined. Eggs, four or five, a bluish-green colour with black spots. The missel-thrush, or Highland magpie, builds far beyond any one's reach, high up in the fork of a tree; the eggs are very lovely--whitish, speckled with brown and red. I do not recommend this bird as a pet. He is too wild.

The merle, or blackbird, frequents the same localities as the mavis does, and is by no means a shy bird even in the wild state, though I imagine he is of a quieter and more affectionate disposition. It is my impression that he does not go so far away from the nest of his pretty mate as the mavis, but then, perhaps, if he did he would not be heard.

The song is even sweeter to the ear than that of the thrush, although it has far fewer notes. It is quieter, more rich and full, more mellow and melodious. The blackbird has been talked of as "fluting in the grove."

The notes are certainly not like those of the flute. They are cut or "tongued" notes like those of the clarionet.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A BIRD-HAUNTED CHURCHYARD.

"Adieu, sweet bird! thou erst hast been Companion of each summer scene, Loved inmate of our meadows green, And rural home; The music of thy cheerful song We loved to hear; and all day long Saw thee on pinion fleet and strong About us roam."

It is usual in the far north of Scotland, where the writer was reared, to have, as in England, the graveyard surrounding the parish church.

The custom is a very ancient and a very beautiful one; life's fitful fever past and gone, to rest under the soft sward, and under the shadow of the church where one gleaned spiritual guidance. There is something in the very idea of this which tends to dispel much of the gloom of death, and cast a halo round the tomb itself.

But at the very door of the old church of N--a tragedy had, years before I had opened my eyes in life, been enacted, and since that day service had never again been conducted within its walls. The new church was built on an open site quite a mile from the old, which latter stands all by itself--crumbling ivy-clad ruins, in the midst of the greenery of an acre of ancient graves. There is a high wall around it, and giant ash and plane trees in summer almost hide it from view. It is a solitary spot, and on moonlit nights in winter, although the highway skirts it, few there be who care to pa.s.s that way. The parish school or academy is situated some quarter of a mile from the auld kirkyard, and in the days of my boyhood even bird-nesting boys seldom, if ever, visited the place.

It was not considered "canny." For me, however, the spot had a peculiar charm. It was so quiet, so retired, and haunted, not with ghosts, but with birds, and many a long sunny forenoon did I spend wandering about in it, or reclining on the gra.s.s with my Virgil or Horace in hand--poets, by the way, who can only be thoroughly enjoyed out of doors in the country.

A pair of owls built in this auld kirkyard for years. I used to think they were always the same old pair, who, year after year, stuck to the same old spot, sending their young ones away to the neighbouring woods to begin life on their own account as soon as they were able to fly.

They were lazy birds; for two whole years they never built a nest of their own, but took possession of a magpie's old one. But at last the lady owl said to her lord--

"My lord, this nest is getting quite disreputable--we _must_ have a new one this spring."

"Very well," said his lordship, looking terribly learned, "but you'll have to build it, my lady, for I've got to think, and think, you know."

"To be sure, my lord," said she. "The world would never go on unless you thought, and thought."

She chose an old window embrasure, and, half hid in ivy, there she built the new nest with weeds and sticks and stubble, while he did nothing but sit and talk Greek and natural philosophy at her.

There were tree sparrows built in the ivy of those crumbling walls, each nest about as big as the bottom of an armchair, and containing as many feathers as would stuff a small pillow-case, to say nothing of threads of all colours, hair, and pieces of printed paper. Seven, eight, and ten eggs would be in some of those, white as to ground, and beautifully speckled with brown and grey.

I have heard the tree sparrow called a nasty, common, dowdy thing. It really is not at all dowdy, and although it may be called the country cousin of the busy, chattering little morsel of feathers and fluff that hops nimbly but noisily about our roof-tops, and is constantly quarrelling with its neighbours, the tree sparrow is far more pretty.

Nor is it quite plebeian. It is the _Pa.s.ser monta.n.u.s_ of some naturalists, the _becfin friquet_ of the French; it belongs to the Greek family, the _Fringillidae_, and does not the linnet belong to that family too? Yes, and the beautiful bullfinch and the gaudy goldfinch as well, to say nothing of the siskin and canary, so it cannot be plebeian.

The tree sparrow makes a nice wee pet, very loving and gentle, and not at all particular as to food. It likes canary-seed, but insects and worms as well, and it is not shy at picking a morsel of sugar, nor a tiny bit of bread and b.u.t.ter.

There were more birds of the same family that haunted this auld kirkyard. The greenfinch or green-grosbeak used to flit hither and thither among the ivy like a tiny streak of lightning, and the pretty wee redpole was also there.

There was one bird in particular that used to build in the trees that grew inside the graveyard wall. I refer to my old friend and favourite the chaffinch, called in Scotland the boldie. He is most brilliant in plumage, being richly clad in russet red and brown, picked out with blue, yellow, and white. The chaffinch is lovely whether sitting or flying, whether trilling his song with head erect and throat puffed out, or keeking down from the branch of a tree with one saucy eye, to see if any one is going near his nest. His song in the wild state is more celebrated for brilliancy and boldness than for sweetness or variation, but in confinement it may be improved.

But this same nest is something to look at and admire for minutes at a time. I used to think my chaffinch--the chaffinch that built in my churchyard--was particularly proud of his nest.

"Pink, pink, pink," he used to say to me; "I see you looking up at my nest. You may go up, if you like, and have a look in. _She_ is from home just now, and there are four eggs in at present. There will be five by-and-by. Now, did you ever see such beautiful eggs?"

"Never," I would reply; "they are most lovely."

"Well, then," he would continue, "pink, pink, pink! look at the nest itself. What do you think of that for architecture? It is built, you see, some twelve feet from the ground, against the stem, but held in its place by a little branch. It is out of the reach of cats; if it were higher up the wind would shake it, or the hawks would see it. It is not much bigger than your two hands; and just look at the artistic way in which the lichens are mingled with the moss on the outside, to blend with the colour of the tree!"

"Yes, but," I would remark, "there are bits of paper there, as well as lichens."

"Yes, yes, yes," the bird would reply; "bits of paper do almost as well as lichens. Pink, pink, pink! There is the whole of Lord Palmerston's speech there; Palmerston is a clever man, but he couldn't build a nest like that."