In a Cheshire Garden Part 5

It is quite a common thing in spring and summer to see starlings catching flies in the air, and I remember in 1906, on September 29th, the air was, one might say, full of starlings, floating about in every direction with expanded wings, and then shooting up or down or to one side when they came within reach of a fly. It was a warm, still day, and I fancy the flies they were catching were winged aphides.

For many years now as soon as the elder-berries are ripe numbers of starlings, chiefly young ones, arrive on the scene, and in a few days clear them off completely.

Jays are not common here, but we have occasionally watched one in the garden as he was looking for fallen acorns in the gra.s.s close to the house.

One may pretty safely count on seeing a magpie near Arley at any time of the year, and we do at long intervals see them in this garden and in the fields near, but they are very far from common.

I have heard of a magpie at a farm in the next village to this, many years ago indeed, who kept his eye on a turkey that was in the habit of laying eggs at a little distance from the house, and often managed to appropriate the newly-laid egg before the farm people could stop him.

Jackdaws are often about, generally in company with rooks, but I have never specially noticed them settling in the garden, as the rooks often do.

In Wales once I saw a jackdaw busily engaged exploring the back of a pony with its beak. The pony continued quietly grazing all the while, but I thought he seemed rather relieved when his visitor left.

In January, 1898, two crows appeared in the garden; I used to see them nearly every evening. A month later we saw a single crow, injured in one wing, go backwards and forwards over the whole length of the opposite bank. Up and down he went, regularly quartering the ground in his search for food. He did this for several days, and we felt quite sorry for him, he was so diligent and persevering, and it must have been so little that he could find within such comparatively narrow limits. We put food for him, which he soon found and seemed to appreciate. He drove away rooks who tried to share it with him, but as he carried away each bit to eat in private the rooks took advantage of his absence, and the supply did not last as long as it might have done.

The poor bird was uncommonly wary: he would spy one out hundreds of yards away and disappear in a wonderful manner, seeing that he could not fly. At last some Ship Ca.n.a.l workmen caught him. I got him from them and kept him for three months, but though he ate pretty well it did not seem to do him much good, and he never became in the least tame to the day of his death.

We have often hoped that rooks would build in the garden; they come sometimes to the higher trees as though they had thoughts of doing so, but they have not gone beyond that as yet. In some years when acorns are ripe many rooks come here to get them (in 1911, although acorns were extraordinarily abundant, I hardly saw a single rook). I have never seen them pick up the acorns on the ground, as the jays and wood-pigeons do, but they gather them fresh for themselves from the tree.

More than once I have seen a single rook pursuing a hawk, and, on the other hand, I have seen a rook put to flight by a missel-thrush.

Rather a strange story was told me of a farmer's daughter at Heatley, near here. She lived by herself not far from the railway station, and every day, summer and winter alike, she fed a number of rooks that habitually waited on her bounty. One winter's day, it appears, she threw down food for a few rooks that were in a tree behind her house.

The next day they were there again, and again she fed them, and so it grew into a regular thing, and they came expecting to be fed like so many fowls every day of the year. My informant often watched the proceeding, and said that the birds seemed to know their benefactress quite well and not to be at all afraid of her, though they were as shy of strangers as any other rooks.

Skylarks are abundant in the neighbourhood, and often in the garden we hear one singing overhead. I have seen a lark singing his regular song on the ground, and have seen one perched on iron railings by the side of a road holding a largish brown moth in its bill, and at the same time uttering repeatedly two or three notes of its song.

Larks are very fond of dusting in roads. I remember being struck one hot day in June by the number of dusting larks I met with in a ten-mile ride. Without any exaggeration there must have been one every twenty yards on an average for the whole distance.

IX.

OTHER BIRDS.

The wild shriek of swifts, as they dash and wheel through the air at their topmost speed, seems to express such intense delight in freedom and motion and power, that it imparts something of the same sense of exhilaration to the beholder, at least, I know it is so with me.

Swifts, or "long-wings," as they are equally well-named in Cheshire, usually find their food at some height in the air, but one day in the beginning of July (1899) I noticed a number of swifts, with a great many swallows and sand-martins, skimming the surface of a patch of clover which had been left standing in a field near the garden. I did not discover what it was, but the attraction must have been something unusual, for the number of birds pa.s.sing and re-pa.s.sing in the very small s.p.a.ce was so extraordinary that it was really difficult to understand how they could avoid collision. All were concentrated in the one spot, and never seemed to go beyond it for more than a couple of yards.

In 1896 there were swifts about all August, and I saw a pair on October 19th. I was told by a friend who was at Brighton in June, 1899, that whenever the band played on the sea front four swifts would appear and fly round and round the bandstand. She never noticed them there, she said, when the band was not playing, although it was her favourite seat at all times of the day.

Nightjars are not uncommon on "mosses" in Lancashire, only a mile or so away, and in Cheshire on the Carrington side of Warburton, but they are less frequent just about here. One year, however (1902), a pair evidently had made their nest in the rough tussocky ground which at that time covered the bed of the old river. From the middle of June to the beginning of July we were treated every evening to the full programme of their entertainment, both vocal and acrobatic. Several times one heard little s.n.a.t.c.hes of the "song," even in the middle of the day in fine, hot weather, but nine p.m., sometimes a little earlier, was the usual time for beginning. The whirring would go on for an hour at a time, with hardly any cessation, but often varying in tone and volume, now swelling out louder and then sinking again. We often saw the two birds playing about together in the air, one or other of them making what is described as a "whipthong" noise and smiting its wings together like a pigeon. Sometimes when they first settled again after a flight, instead of the loud whirring there would be every now and then a soft, liquid, bubbling sound.

A favourite resting-place was the bare bough of a Scotch fir, and here as it lay lengthways and perfectly still the bird looked so like part of the branch itself that I couldn't persuade a friend who was with me that it was a bird until he actually saw it fly away. After July 4th we heard no more of them, and for a day or two before that the whirring was much more interrupted, in shorter spells, and varied more in intensity and clearness than usual.

Before the next spring came round the Ship Ca.n.a.l had covered the river-bed with another layer of mud dredgings, and we have neither seen nor heard a nightjar in the garden since, but in June, 1910, I heard from the keeper that he had watched one flying round an old black-poplar just opposite the garden gate, flapping the ends of the boughs with his wings and catching the moths that were driven out.

One of the most delightful of country sounds is, I think, the laugh of the green woodp.e.c.k.e.r, and when I heard that a pair of woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were constantly to be seen (January and February, 1901) about some old poplars not far away, and that early one morning one was working at the rotten posts of a fence in the very next field, my hopes were raised that even yet that welcome sound might be heard from the garden. But the birds turned out to be greater-spotted woodp.e.c.k.e.rs and not green, and these do not express the joy of living so plainly. I have several times since seen one of these spotted woodp.e.c.k.e.rs in the garden. One day (in April, 1908) I watched the bird for a long time as he visited in succession each of the posts in a wire fence by the old river-bed.

Green woodp.e.c.k.e.rs are rare in this part of the country, but "lesser-spotted" are found in Dunham Park, and the keeper tells me he has seen them in Warburton Fox-cover.

In the low-lying meadows by the Bollin, half a mile away, kingfishers have always been found, haunting the little water-courses and ditches, but at one time we were able to see them even from the garden itself.

In the making of the Ship Ca.n.a.l a part of the old river just beyond us was left unfilled up, and formed a fair-sized pool. Kingfishers used to come to this, and as long as there was any water at all in the old river-bed I often stood outside this house and watched the blue streak of light as the bird, with his peculiar shrill cry, flew straight as an arrow past me. Even in August, 1899, when what remained of the river was nothing but seething mud, in which I am sure there could have been no living fish, I disturbed a kingfisher from an overhanging branch on the bank.

A friend in the village, a keen observer of birds, has often seen, he tells me, that when kingfishers fly from the meadows to the "pits" on higher ground they first rise straight up into the air and then dart off in a perfect bee-line to their destination. He also said that kingfishers invariably desert a nest that has been touched. He was repairing the embankment of the Bollin once when a kingfisher's nest was accidentally laid open, and although the nest itself was not injured, and the two young ones in it were nearly fledged and fought at his hand like little owls, when two days later he was at the place again he found them both dead, unable to find food for themselves and forsaken by their parents.

The coming of the cuckoo seems to be of more interest to people here than any event in natural history, and cuckoos are, I should say, more plentiful with us than in many places, and are nearly as often seen as heard.

I must have seen a dozen one day in May from the high road during a short drive of a few miles, and, generally speaking, in May not a day (I should not be far out if I said not an hour of the day) goes by without our knowing by sight as well as sound that there are cuckoos in the garden.

The widespread belief that cuckoos turn into hawks in winter is still seriously held in Cheshire to-day, even by farmers.

For three days in the end of July, 1905, I was able from my study window to watch a young cuckoo being fed by its foster-parent, a meadow-pipit. The cuckoo was sitting on a wire fence on the opposite bank. At first it sat in a floppy kind of way, with its wings hanging down on either side, as if to keep its balance, but the next day it seemed to have gained strength and sat up better. The little pipit (if it was always the same, and I never saw more than one at once) was not away for more than a minute or two, except on the third day, when it was pouring wet and food seemed harder to find. As soon as the cuckoo knew that its nurse was coming it began opening its mouth and quivering its wings, while the poor little dupe that brought the food would alight a short distance off and run along the wire to its side, then, looking ridiculously small for the job, it would manage to pop something into its mouth, not all in one go, but in two or three. It was curious to notice that every time after being fed the ungrateful cuckoo gave spiteful pecks at the poor deluded little slave who was working so hard to supply its wants.

One day in May (1908) a cuckoo alighted on a tree close to the house, attended by two small birds. He seemed rather uneasy in their company, and kept looking suspiciously at them; they, I fancy, were trying to make up their minds to attack him, but they let "I dare not" wait so long upon "I would" that he went off unmolested.

Barn owls are comparatively common. Farmers are learning to understand better their great usefulness, and at least to leave them alone. Some, indeed, do more than this, and I know of two cases where the pigeon cote in the hay-loft has been given up to them. Through the back door of one of these cotes I have been able to see at my ease the funny little round-faced hissing young ones, and I was quite surprised to find how very long it is before the fully-fledged birds turn out of the nest. My friend at Heatley was one of those who entertained the owls, and he told me that if an old bird accidentally dropped a mouse as he made his way into the loft, he never by any chance attempted to recover it. He said he used on winter evenings to see the owls fly along the eaves of the neighbouring houses and inside the roof of a hayshed close by, beating with their wings to drive out the sparrows that were roosting there, and he found the remains of a great many sparrows in their casts.

A barn-owl appeared in the garden one day in May, 1899. It did all it could to hide itself in the bushes and thick Scotch firs, but in spite of its efforts the birds in the neighbourhood, led on apparently by the blackbirds, found it out again and again, and kept up a ceaseless noise and commotion as long as it was here. (I noticed that the fowls, both c.o.c.ks and hens, joined in the general clamour.) In December, however, I have seen an owl fly into one of the out-houses in the middle of the day, and even sit calmly in full view on a leafless tree without attracting the least notice from any bird.

The keeper tells me that brown, long-eared, and short-eared owls are all to be found in Warburton at times, brown owls nesting here regularly.

Sparrow hawks come to us occasionally, but not so often as kestrels.

The difference in the behaviour of small birds with regard to these two hawks is remarkable, and plainly shows that they have, as a rule, little to fear from kestrels. One November day, for instance, a sparrow hawk appeared in a tree just opposite my window, causing the greatest commotion and consternation among sparrows and all other birds. A week later a kestrel came to the same place at the same time of the day and stayed about for a considerable time, but none of the small birds took the least notice of him.

My friend at Heatley, who used to have the owls as his tenants, once (in 1897) shot a sparrow hawk near his house that had a screaming blackbird in his talons, and was tearing off from its back strips of feathers and flesh together without apparently having tried to kill it first. He told me that twice he had seen a lark escape from a sparrow hawk. In both instances the lark's idea seemed to be to rise higher than the hawk, and the two kept going up together. The hawk made repeated stoops at his quarry, but each time he missed, the lark striking now to the right and now to the left. The contest ended in both cases by the lark dashing down to cover from a great height; one time it found refuge among the shrubs in a garden, and on the second occasion it came down faster than he could describe with its wings closed against its sides, and just slanting over the tops of some fruit trees opposite, dashed straight into the kitchen. To do this it had to pa.s.s through the sliding door of the back-kitchen, which was not more than two feet open, and then through the open door of the kitchen.

Strange to say, it was able to check its speed sufficiently to alight uninjured on the floor, though utterly exhausted and helpless. My friend picked it up, and having held it for some minutes in his hand, let it fly away seeming none the worse for its perilous adventure. The hawk, he said, sailed calmly once or twice round the house before he took himself off.

The following is part of a letter I received in November, 1894:--"A sparrow hawk took up his nightly abode on the transome of the top light of a window in Arley Chapel in the autumn of 1890, and remained constant to that roosting place until, at all events, May, 1892, when we left Arley. How long it stayed there after we left I cannot say, but I was told last winter that it had disappeared. The hawk was always solitary; I never saw it with a companion. The roost was always exactly on the same stone."

One has heard stories of other birds living the same kind of lonely existence, but I never saw a very satisfactory explanation as to how it is that they come to do so. The pairing instinct is strong in birds, and it must be a powerful motive that makes them disregard it. We are told that if a bird of prey loses its mate it does not take it long to find another. May we suppose that solitary birds like this at Arley are waiting in readiness for such an emergency? Or is such a bird simply one that, being old and cantankerous, is bored by female society, or feels himself unequal to the cares of a family?

All birds seem to give a sparrow hawk a wide berth, but one often sees a kestrel pursued, most frequently perhaps by a rook, but sometimes by a peewit or a gull. In October, 1908, I saw from the garden a kestrel persecuted by two rooks. He kept dodging their attacks, but didn't seem to mind them much and never turned on them. Again, at the end of October, 1906, I was watching a kestrel as it hovered over a field close by, when I saw it suddenly and violently a.s.saulted by a missel-thrush. It gave way for some s.p.a.ce, but when in a minute or two the thrush flew off, it returned to its first position and continued hovering just as if never interrupted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Food Stand.]

I have heard from a man here, an old gamekeeper, a story like one that I have read somewhere before. He had seen a kestrel pounce upon what he supposed to be a mouse and fly off with it. Presently, to his surprise, it fell like a stone to the ground and he picked it up quite dead; close by it he found a dead stoat.

Wild duck breed in the Bollin meadows and may sometimes be seen in the garden as they fly over; we see wild geese, too, sometimes, and occasionally a heron. I was much struck one day by the flight of a pair of swans over the garden. They were not flying high, but side by side, with their long necks stretched out, with strong regular wing-beats; without haste and without effort, they held on their straight and even course at a good steady pace. It gave me rather a strange impression of dignity and power.

One or two pairs of wood-pigeons build in the garden every year, but they are not as common in Warburton as in more wooded country, though sometimes large flocks visit us in autumn (_e.g._, in 1910). My friend at Heatley told me that one year when a great many had come to feed on acorns in a wood near his house, he had hoped from the shelter of a wooden hut to make a good bag, but he found that in spite of their numbers they were extremely wideawake, and though they covered the ground in every other direction, they carefully eschewed a trail of Indian corn, with which he had hoped to tempt them within reach of his gun.

Turtledoves are fairly common in Cheshire, but there are many more in some years than in others. I only remember their nesting in this garden once (in 1899), when they were to be seen on the lawn every day.

Pheasants are constant visitors; we are very seldom without them at any time of the year, and since parts of the old river-bed have been left wild they have taken to breeding here. We have often watched from our window the c.o.c.k pheasant strutting about the hen, ruffling up his feathers and displaying himself to advantage like a turkey-c.o.c.k. The tufts of ear-like feathers on each side of the head are a marked feature in the c.o.c.k at the courting season and give the bird a curious Mephistophelian look.

We noticed once when we came upon them unawares as they were feeding on corn we had put for them, that the hen, instead of scuttling off like the c.o.c.k, clapped close to the ground almost within arm's length, evidently trusting for concealment to her sober colouring.