In a Cheshire Garden Part 3

In June broods of young t.i.ts appear flying from tree to tree in little parties. The old birds tirelessly hunt for food, whilst the greeny-yellowy little ones sit expecting and cheeping among the boughs.

In comparing the marsh and coal-t.i.ts together one might imagine that they each originally had the same amount of black allowed them for the head, but while the marsh-t.i.t preferred to have all his in one patch at the back, the coal-t.i.t would have a bit cut out to make a bib for his chin! Of the two the marsh-t.i.t is my favourite. I like the delicate tints of its more sober colouring better than the more contrasted yet more commonplace colours of the coal-t.i.t.

There seems something savouring of meanness about coal-t.i.ts; they are cautious and artful and carry away their food presumably to store, there is not time to have swallowed it before they are back again at the stand.

A pair of coal-t.i.ts that were here one winter seemed quite demoralised by the food-stand, and to have altogether given up hunting for their natural food.

Both kinds are perfectly amicable together, but a marsh will make way for a coal-t.i.t. The marsh-t.i.t seems to excite special animosity in tom-t.i.ts, whilst the coal-t.i.t watches his opportunity, and, nipping in just at the right moment, escapes much persecution. Of the two the coal-t.i.t has a more musical voice and a greater variety of notes, but once (in 1899) when watching a party of marsh-t.i.ts, I heard, besides the usual harsh note, a kind of continuous warble every now and then, which I could attribute to no other bird, though I could not actually see a marsh-t.i.t uttering it.

The delightful little wrens are always with us, and the loud, clear ringing notes of their sweet song may be heard almost throughout the year. In July, when most birds are silent, the wren does his best to make up for it, he seems to take a pleasure in having the field to himself, and his song may be heard, and often his alone every day until the middle of August. By that time some of the robins, having recovered from their moult, begin to tune up, and the wren leaves it to them to keep the ball going whilst he retires from the scene to complete his own change of feather. Apparently with such a tiny body to cover that is not a long business, for his bright little voice may be heard again early in September. I always myself feel inclined to say "thank you" at the conclusion of a wren's musical effort, and have been surprised to find that there are people, it may be many people, who do not hear his song at all of themselves, and when their attention is specially drawn think it "only a bird squeaking!"

Wrens never seem to be tame in the same way that robins are, nor do they ever attempt to get at the food on the stand, or to share in the fowls' meals, but they often come close to the windows, creeping up and down the frames, in quest of spiders and other small game.

A sight was reported to me the other day that I would have given a good deal to have seen with my own eyes. When for two days in January (1912) the ground was thickly covered with snow, I put a plate of sc.r.a.ps for the birds in the open porch. In the evening of the second day of snow, when the maid went to light the porch lamp, she saw this plate, as she described it, full of wrens (little birds with their tails turned up over their backs, she called them); there must have been, she thought, certainly not less than fifteen of them. When they saw her they flew off in a flock to the creeper outside, just where for two or three years there has been a wren's nest. Perhaps this little company was made up of the family that owned that nest as their home. In was in 1909 that a wren first built there among the stems of the Virginian creeper close to the front door. The body of the nest was quite hidden between the creeper and the wall, the little entrance-hole alone being visible. We constantly saw the bird going in and out, taking a turn to stretch his wings or bringing home provisions for his household, and often he would sit close by and give vent to his feelings in a joyous burst of song. He appears to have been pleased with the success of his first venture on this site, for he has used the very same nest for the last two years.

A wren has the same directness of flight as a kingfisher or a dipper; it has none of the up and down course of most small birds, but it follows a bee-line to its destination, with rapidly-beating wings, but making comparatively slow progress. I was much struck by this, as one day I watched a wren fly from a low bush to a height of 40 or 50 feet up a poplar, it seemed to take quite an age to get there.

VI.

WAGTAILS, FLYCATCHERS, SWALLOWS AND OTHER INSECT-EATERS.

Pied wagtails never entirely desert us, though, of course, there are many more, and they are much more in evidence, in summer than in winter. It is a continual pleasure to watch them, to see the speed with which they run in pursuit of a fly, the deftness of the capture, and the satisfaction so plainly displayed at the feat, by the eloquent balancing of the long tail. One day in August (1899) I watched a wagtail through a gla.s.s, and distinctly saw him capture and devour four "daddy-long legs" in succession. Besides running after them on the ground, they will often fly up at insects in the air.

Pied wagtails are no respecters of persons as far as other birds are concerned; I have seen a single wagtail at one time pursuing a peewit, at another a sandpiper, and their encounters with swallows on the gra.s.s are most amusing to watch. When the swallows are flying low the wagtails will deliberately fly at them and even for a little way after them.

A family of pied wagtails usually take possession of the lawn opposite one of our windows, and we can observe the process of education in the art of catching flies, from the stage in which the young are content to be fed entirely by their parents through that in which they supplement the supply by their own efforts, until finally little difference in skill is to be noticed between old birds and the young.

This family appear to resent the intrusion of other birds on their domain (as shown in their behaviour towards swallows), and I have seen them persistently drive away young yellow wagtails who presumed to trespa.s.s on their hunting ground.

Yellow wagtails are not so often seen in the garden, though they are plentiful enough in the neighbourhood. They are lively and attractive and their bright colour contrasts strongly with the freshly ploughed earth so that their arrival is always noticed by the farmers and seems to interest them more than the coming of any other migrant except the cuckoo.

Meadow pipits are common in the fields around, but I cannot remember ever to have seen one actually in the garden. On a rough bit of ground near the Ship Ca.n.a.l bridge they are always to be found, and I have watched one there for twenty minutes or more at a time as he soared up to a considerable height, singing all the time, and then came down again to the ground with wings and tail spread out, after the manner of a tree-pipit, with a little musical twitter just as he landed. It kept repeating this performance over and over again all the time I was there.

For some years a tree-pipit used to take up his abode with us every summer and give us the benefit of his energetic song. I was very much amused once to watch him on some iron hurdles at the end of the garden.

He was so much in earnest and so full of energy; he would sing a little bit, then run along the top rail a little way, then sing again, and so on until he had gone nearly the whole length of the railings. This entertainment he went through day after day for a fortnight or more at the end of June and the beginning of July.

Spotted flycatchers have not been as common with us lately as they were at one time, when they always made their home here during their summer visit to this country, and were constantly in evidence. We have not had a nest for several years, and last year (1911) I did not see a single flycatcher in the garden, but this year, I am glad to say, they have come back again and there has been a nest in the ivy on the house wall.

It was placed so low down that we could easily look into it, but never once did I surprise the old bird; she seemed to hear one's footsteps at a distance, and long before one reached the nest she was off. The young were hatched on June 29th, but their eyes did not open until July 6th.

Whilst they were blind and as they grew bigger the nest seemed much too small for them, and often one fancied two of them must inevitably have been smothered, as they were quite hidden under the other three.

Even after they could see there was some confusion during the heat of the day; but it was one of the prettiest sights imaginable when they were tucked in for the night; all five heads with their sharp little beaks and bright black eyes were arranged in perfect order, all looking together in the same direction out of the nest. People in the village call these birds by the name of "old man," and it seems expressive, somehow peculiarly appropriate to their greyish colouring and quiet un.o.btrusive manners.

For five years running a pair of flycatchers built in a fork of a thick ivy-stem on the old church tower. They chose a most exposed place by the side of a walk trodden by dozens of visitors to the church nearly every day of the summer. The first time we noticed it (in 1894) the nest was so low and so exposed that nothing could save it. In 1895, when it was placed higher up and better concealed, the young were successfully reared. In 1896 they chose a position actually not more than three feet from the ground, and yet, marvellous to relate, owing to watchful care on the part of human friends, and the continual replacing of a screen of ivy leaves, they scored another success. In 1897, though the site was higher up and apparently much safer, the young birds were taken, but in 1898 they were again able to escape the attentions of cats and boys and bring off their brood without mishap; in 1899 they wisely abandoned the dangerous situation altogether.

I was once watching a flycatcher perched on the food-stand opposite and close to my open window, when I noticed that besides a constantly-repeated weak single note, it had every now and then a cadence of two and again of three notes, and sometimes a very faint kind of inward warble.

The iron boundary hurdles on the south side of the garden are a favourite stand for flycatchers, and I have seen them busily occupied there in catching flies, which they carried to their young ones in the trees near by, whilst every now and then the prettily-marked youngsters would themselves come down to the top rail and sit there to be fed.

Croquet hoops on the gra.s.s near these hurdles seem to have a great attraction for them. Two, sometimes three, would be there at the same time. After each pursuit of a pa.s.sing fly they would return now to the same hoop, now to another, and sometimes they seemed to go the round of all the hoops in turn. Every day throughout the summer they would be there, and in the white line under each hoop was left indisputable evidence of their regular occupation.

Towards the end of July, 1902, we were much interested in a pair of flycatchers with their little family of three. One of the old birds would spend its time catching flies for the young ones, whilst the other rested, sitting quite unconcerned by itself on the rails. When the working parent brought a fly to one of the family the other two would hurry up, and there was constantly a small crowd of four gesticulating little birds in one part or other of the lawn. Between the intervals of being fed the young birds learnt to forage for themselves, not, I noticed, flying off the ground after insects, but running after them on the gra.s.s. These five birds stayed with us until September 9th. They often flew down from the trees to catch flies on the gra.s.s, and would hover in front of shrubs and tall plants whilst they picked off the flies near them.

When flycatchers have been on the croquet hoops and swallows were flying low, they had not seldom to get pretty sharply out of the way to avoid a collision, as the swallows appeared purposely to fly at them.

In 1908 we were fortunate enough to see a bird here that is very seldom found in Cheshire, namely, a pied flycatcher. It was in the evening of August 25th that we saw it. The strange little bird came quite close up to the French window of the room in which we were sitting, and we noticed plainly the white patch on his wing. It did not seem at all shy, and I watched it about the house for an hour or so.

It is said in "The Fauna of Cheshire" that while birds are sometimes seen during the spring migration, there is no other record of a pied flycatcher in Cheshire on the return journey in autumn.

Of swallows there is no lack. Nearly every year there are one or two nests in the outbuildings, and in 1900 a pair began to build against the wall of the house porch just over the front door. The wall was perfectly flat, and they began to fasten mud against it as a house-martin would have done. To save possible untoward consequences to the hats of visitors I rigged up a shelf over the door; this, perhaps, frightened them, at any rate, they did not go on with their work.

In 1908 a pair set their minds on building in the old church, and build they did in spite of all we could do in the way of keeping doors and windows shut (they must have found their way through some broken quarry of a window). However, when we saw that we were beaten we made the best of it, and really there was very little mess, and it was pleasant to hear them warbling in the roof. When the young birds were hatched in July the old ones were more wary than ever. If they saw anyone in the church, instead of going on to the nest, they would turn back and fly away with their mouthful of dainties. However, by hiding, I managed to see the nestlings fed, and noticed that though they were very vociferous when they guessed there was an immediate prospect of their hunger being satisfied, a warning note from the old bird seemed to silence them at once.

For a good many years a pair of swallows have nested in the porch of the new church, and in 1910 an old trimmed straw hat that hung on a nail in an outbuilding at the church-house was chosen by another pair as a suitable foundation for their nest, and in this rather strangely-placed nursery they brought up a young family.

There is something very charming in the swallow's warbling song, beyond its a.s.sociation with warm and beautiful weather; and when in autumn they are congregating by thousands, to hear them all chanting together as they fill the air, and, sailing round and round in widening and interlacing circles, mount higher and higher until the highest are almost out of sight, is to my mind wonderfully grand and impressive.

Sometimes the swallows melt away without any noticeable gatherings, while in other years they a.s.semble in such flocks about the end of September that in certain favourite hunting grounds the sky is almost darkened by them, and to watch the intricate maze of perpetual motion is enough to make one giddy, while as at intervals they sit resting, they seem to stretch away for miles in long lines on the telegraph wires.

Swallows and wagtails apparently grudge one another (and flycatchers) a share in their insect sporting rights, if their mutual spitefulness has any meaning. This common taste for the same kind of food often brings the three into close quarters, and it is curious to notice the different methods they use to compa.s.s the same end; the swallow ceaselessly rushing at full speed through the air, the wagtail trusting to his nimbleness of foot, and the flycatcher making a series of little excursions upwards after his prey. I have seen swallows walking about on the gra.s.s and picking up flies, and when their young ones are resting on the ground they will often bring them food there, alighting by the side first of one and then of another.

Ten years ago it was only on two or three houses in the village that house-martins built, and they were seldom seen except in the immediate neighbourhood of these, but now (1911) they have become comparatively abundant everywhere. The wooden hay-sheds recently put up at many of the farms seem to have attracted them in the first instance, but when once they were led to look more closely into the matter they evidently found that there were many more eligible building sites in Warburton than they had had any idea of before. They have never yet made their real home with us, but during the latter part of the summer they come in crowds to the garden, and there are among them many only just able to fly, who spend most of their time on the roof of the house, waiting to be fed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Corner in the Garden with Allium Dioscorides.]

Two house-martins fell down a bedroom chimney here, and when I opened the window to let them out, whilst one took advantage of it at once the other kept flying round and round quite close up to the ceiling and resting on a bell-wire that ran across. It was a long time, more than half an hour, before I could persuade him that he was looking in the wrong place for a way of escape.

At one time after the Ship Ca.n.a.l had been begun and traffic had ceased on the river, a large colony of sand-martins established themselves under the disused towing-path almost opposite, and naturally they were then plentiful enough. Now, as far as we are concerned, the river with all its belongings is a thing of the past, and it is only occasionally that we see the little brown birds hawking for flies in the garden.

I was surprised not long ago to find in a field-sandpit, a mile away from any other sand-martins' nests that I knew of, a solitary nest in a hole within easy reach of my hand. The young must have been hatched, for I watched the birds go in with food.

Sand-martins have a peculiar interest as being perhaps the most universally distributed of all small birds. One likes to think that nearly everywhere one went, in Asia, Africa or America, the very same little brown swallows might be seen ceaselessly flitting about, bringing back to mind the green fields and cloudy skies of home in England.

Only once have I seen that other cosmopolitan, the tree-creeper, in the garden. One morning in May, 1895, I heard a strange, small, rather shrill song and found that it came from a little brown tree-creeper on an oak just opposite my window. I watched it for some time through field gla.s.ses as it climbed about, prying into every crack of the bark and singing as it worked.

VII.

SPARROWS AND OTHER FINCHES.

Although I have never myself seen a goldfinch in the garden, they have been seen here, and on the rough ground near the Ship Ca.n.a.l they are not uncommon, indeed, I have heard of several shillings a week being made by birds that have been caught there in spite of County Council orders. They are usually known here as "red linnets," but another Cheshire name for them is "nickers."

Greenfinches (green linnets in Cheshire) abound; in early spring they are more than usually conspicuous, as in their brightest feather they pursue one another in and out among the hollies and dark yew hedges.

Though then less evident to the eye, throughout the summer they let us know by their unmistakable and wearisome notes that they are with us still.