‘Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.’
The word seems to express a kind of singing which is soft, continuous, and ‘legato.’
[12]Published by its author at 6 Tenterden Street, Hanover Square.
[13]The three species were the Wood-warbler, Phylloscopus sibilatrix (Bechst.), Willow-warbler, Ph. trochilus (Linn.), and Chiff-chaff, Ph. collybita (Viell.). Markwick declares that he could not distinguish the first of these from the other two.
[14]The song ceases about mid-June, and is not renewed till August: it is then usually so wanting in force as to be hardly recognizable. See Note B. at end of Volume. [15]The spring of 1886 saw this hedge deserted by both species; the result of an outbreak of lawn-tennis in the adjoining field. They were lucky enough to find new quarters not far off.
[16]The scientific name is appropriate, viz. Sylvia rufa.
[17]Our Summer Migrants, p. 82.
[18]Mr. Courthope’s Paradise of Birds. No one who loves birds or poetry should fail to read Mr. Ruskin’s commentary on the chorus from which these lines are taken, in Love’s Meinie, p. 139 and foll.
[19]Unless it be in the westernmost branch, which runs at the foot of the Berkshire hills. Near Godstow the nest is to be found, as Mr. W. T. Arnold, of University Col., has kindly informed me: for obvious reasons I will not describe the spot.
[20]In the summer of 1886 this interesting bird was quite abundant in and round Oxford. If I am not mistaken a nest was built in the reeds of the fountain at the south end of the Botanic Garden, a perfectly secure spot. I heard the song there as late as the end of July.
[21]This bird cannot really be wholly missing in summer, but it is strange how seldom I have seen or heard it. It is wanting also from a list sent me by Mr. A. H. Macpherson, of birds noticed by him in Switzerland last summer (1886). But Anderegg tells me that its song is often heard near his house at Meiringen. The Missel-thrush is certainly more abundant.
[22]This name (Alpenlerche) seems to be applied by the peasantry both to this species and to the Alpine Accentor. Mr. Seebohm, in his British Birds, calls the former, very appropriately, the Alpine Pipit.
[23]E.g. on the rocks about the Devil’s Bridge near Andermatt, or on these of the Gemmi-pass.
[24]In common with other Woodpeckers, as Mr. H. Wharton has reminded me in the Academy. It is indeed very doubtful whether this striking bird was known either to Aristotle or Pliny; it is now an uncommon bird in Italy, and is properly an inhabitant of northern Europe. But when Italy was covered with forest (cp. Theophrastus, Hist. Plant, v. 8. 2) it must have been known to the country people.
[25]The closer acquaintance has been made, and I have learnt the song of this bird, which is not unlike that of the Lesser White-throat described in Chapter II. Of all the warblers I know, this is the most restless and difficult to observe when once the leaves are fully out. It is the only bird, I think, which has completely baffled me during a whole morning spent in pursuing the song without once getting a fair look at the singer. (June, 1889.) [26]Mr. Seebohm’s British Birds is a remarkable exception to this tendency.
[27]This kindly patron of birds is E. D. Lockwood, Esq., late of the Bengal Civil Service, and author of Natural History, Sport, and Travel in India.
[28]They came, but found the hole occupied by the ubiquitous Starling. He again gave way to a pair of bold Blue-tits, who brought up their young here, flitting about the garden like large blue butterflies.
[29]For exactly four years I saw no other Black Redstart in Oxfordshire. But on November 5, 1888, another caught my eye within half a mile of the spot described in the text. This time it was another new and ugly wall that he patronized, transferring his attention now and then to the cabbages in a cottage garden hard by.
[30]The discovery in Germany (see the Ibis for April, 1889) of a Cuckoo hatching its own egg should put all English observers on the look-out. We have taken it too much for granted that such a thing could not happen.
[31]Col. Barrow tells me that now (August, 1886) they have come to prefer bread to nuts, and will leave the latter so long as they can get the former.
[32]When does he leave us? On Aug. 23, 1886, I saw an astonishing number of Flycatchers all on the same side of an orchard, and felt sure, from their restlessness, that they had assembled, as swallows do, in view of migration. On the 24th I went to S. Wales, where, during a whole week, I only saw one, though they were abundant up to that time. Letters from ornithological friends led me to believe that the birds have almost entirely disappeared from South and East England by about Sept. 12; and Mr. Seebohm is probably right in giving the first week of September as the usual date of their departure. How much less we know of the departure than of the arrival of birds, so quietly do they slip away!
[33]Mr. Seebohm (Brit. Birds, i. 325) tells us of a quiet little warble, so low as to be scarcely heard at a few yards’ distance; but this I have never yet succeeded in catching.
[34]This year (1886) I took all the sparrows’ nests on my house, and examined the young birds. Only one or two young peas and grains had been given them: they had been fed largely on insects.
[35]Mr. Aplin tells me, however, that the upper parts, in summer at least, “have a decided wash or gloss of green”: Mr. Seebohm calls it “dull olive-brown.”
[36]Stone-chats have been observed busy in this way near Oxford.—A. H. M.
[37]The chat of the Whin-chat is a dissyllable, ‘u-tic’; that of the Stone-chat a monosyllable, ‘chat.’ (O. V. A.)
[38]The Meadow Bunting (Emberiza cia) seemed to me, when I met with it in Switzerland this summer, to be more lively and restless than other Buntings.
[39]See Note B at the end of the volume. [40]Or like a delicate electric bell, heard at some distance, while the door of your room is slowly opened and again closed.
[41]Another cause is doubtless the crescendo and diminuendo which the bird uses: see a valuable note in The Birds of Cumberland, by the Rev. H. A. Macpherson and W. Duckworth.
[42]In May this year (1886) I nearly trod upon a pair of these birds, near the same wood: yet they showed no fear, allowed me to approach them within six paces, and continued to reel close at hand.
[43]As in Milton’s “most musical, most melancholy.” But as Coleridge remarks in a note to his own poem of the Nightingale, in Sibylline Leaves, these words of Milton are spoken in the character of the melancholy man, and have therefore a dramatic rather than a descriptive propriety. Coleridge’s own conception of the song is the true one and most happily expressed.
[44]A Woodpecker on a railway bridge is a curiosity. But a Lesser Spotted bird was once seen on the stonework of the bridge which spans the Chipping Norton branch line, by the Rev. S. D. Lockwood, Rector of my parish, who knows the bird well.
[45]Vol. ii. pp. 461-463. Hickwall seems to be the recognized orthography; but I spell the word as it was pronounced.
[46]They will often build their nests in holes in the timber of the houses. Anderegg tells me that this was the case in his own house two years ago. Nor is this the only instance of the habits of birds being affected by the nature of the house-architecture in these parts; for the House-martins, being unable (I suppose) to make their nests adhere securely against timber, or disliking the large projecting eaves, build in the Haslithal under ledges of rock, and are known there as the Rock-martin, as distinct from the Rock-swallow (Felsenschwalbe), which is the name there given to the Crag-martin. It is well-known that there are places even in England where this bird prefers rocks to houses.
[47]I afterwards saw three of the same species about some stunted thistles on the Furka-pass, at a height of 8000 feet, and on a bitter cold day. See Note D. at end of Volume. [48]It is worth noting that Knox observed that the progress of the Pied Wagtail is chiefly observable between daybreak and 10 a.m. All the movements I noticed in the Alps were observed during the earlier morning hours.
[49]Ancient Lives of Virgil (Prof. Nettleship), p. 33.
[50] I Virgil then, of sweet Parthenope
The nursling, woo’d the flowery walks of peace
Inglorious, &c.
[51]“Habuit domum Romae Esquiliis juxta hortos Maecenatianos, quamquam secessu Campaniae Siciliaeque plurimum uteretur.” (Life by Suetonius, ch. 13.)
[52]Plin., N. H. x. 60. Aristotle refutes the fable, which is alluded to by Aristophanes in the Birds (1137). See Arist., H. N. viii. 14. 5.
[53] And all the while, with hollow voice, thine own
Loved wood-pigeon shall soothe thee, nor alone,
For from the lofty elm the dove shall ever moan.
[54]Eclogue iii. 68.
[55]Columella viii. 8. Cato de Re Rustica, 90.
[56]Philemon Holland so translates palumbes in his version of Pliny.
[57]Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, p. 374.
[58] But no whit the more
For all expedients tried and travail borne
By man and beast in turning oft the soil,
Do greedy goose and Strymon-haunting cranes
And succory’s bitter fibres not molest
Or shade not injure—
[59] Time it is to set
Snares for the crane, and meshes for the stag,
And hunt the long-eared hares.
[60] The Dardanians on the walls raise a shout to the sky.
Hope comes to kindle wrath; they hurl their missiles strongly;
even as under black clouds cranes from the Strymon utter
their signal notes and sail clamouring across the sky, and
noisily stream down the gale.
—Aen. x. 262 foll.
[61] Never at unawares did showers annoy:
Or, as it rises, the high-soaring cranes
Flee to the hills before it, or, with face
Upturned to heaven, the heifer snuffs the gale
Through gaping nostrils, or about the meres
Shrill-twittering flits the swallow.
—Georgic i. 373.
[62] In blushing spring
Comes the white bird long-bodied snakes abhor.
—Georg. ii. 320.
[63]Mirabilia 23.
[64]See Petronius, Satyr. 55. Cp. also Juv. Sat. 1, line 116, and Mayor’s note. In the London Zoological Gardens, in March 1889, a pair of Storks were illustrating Petronius’ lines admirably—except in that they were captives.
[65]Gibbon, vol. iv. p. 240, ed. Milman.
[66]Georg. i. 120, 139, 156, 271.
[67]Cic. de Div. i. 29.
[68]N. II. x. 32.
[69] Then the crow
With full voice, good-for-nought, inviting rain,
Stalks on the dry sand mateless and alone.
—Georg. i. 388.
[70] Soft then the voice of rooks from indrawn throat
Thrice, four times, o’er repeated, and full oft
On their high cradles, by some hidden joy
Gladdened beyond their wont, in bustling throngs
Among the leaves they riot; so sweet it is
When showers are spent, their own loved nests again
And tender brood to visit.
—Georg. i. 410.
[71]Sundevall (Thierarten des Aristoteles, p. 123) pronounces ???a? to have been our Raven.
[72]See Newton’s Yarrell, ii. 290.
[73] Whose weedy water feeds the snow-white swan.
—Georg. ii. 199.
[74]With that a great noise rises aloft in diverse contention, even as when flocks of birds haply settle on a lofty grove, and swans utter their hoarse cry among the vocal pools in the fish-filled river of Padusa. —Aen. xi. 456; cp. vii. 700.
[75] When cool eve
Allays the air, and dewy moonbeams slake
The forest glades, with halcyon’s voice the shore
And every thicket with the goldfinch rings.
—Georg. iii. 338.
[76] Not to the Sun’s warmth there upon the shore
Do halcyons dear to Thetis ope their wings.
—Georg. i. 398.
[77]This exception is singular, as Pliny seems to depend on Aristotle for everything else which he tells about the bird. I am inclined to think that in this case Pliny must have supplemented his master’s account from his own observation. He had a villa on the bay of Naples, which bay was probably the ‘littus’ referred to by Virgil; and both may here have seen the bird on the shore.
[78]I have seen a photograph of this coin, and satisfied myself that the bird was meant for a Tern. But I have so far been unable to discover any connection between Eretria and the ??????. Sundevall is confident that Aristotle’s bird is the Kingfisher.
[79]E.g. Aristotle gives, and Pliny copies from him, an extraordinary account of the nest and eggs. N. H. ix. 14. See Note C, at end of volume. [80]For the connection between ??a??a and ??a?a???? see Conington’s note on Georg. iii. 338.
[81]Theophrastus, for example, applies it to the Egyptian mimosa, the thorns of which lately proved so damaging to our troops in the Soudan. (Lenz, Botanik der Griechen, p. 735.)
[82]There is another reading, ‘et acanthida.’
[83]?a????? ?a? ?a???????, f???? ??t?? ??????? ????s??.—Hist. Anim. ix. 17.
[84]A sibilant trill is probably what is meant in a passage of the Greek Anthology (i. 175), ??????? ?e?s?? ??a???de?; suggesting the Grasshopper Warbler (see p. 154), or the Sedge-warbler. [85]Georg. i. 356 foll. I quote this time Mr. R. D. Blackmore’s admirable rhyming version. Ere yet the lowering storm breaks o’er the land
A sullen groundswell heaves along the strand,
On mountain heights dry snapping sounds are heard,
The booming shores bedrizzled are and blurred,
And soughs of wind sigh through the forest stirred.
The wave already scarce foregoes the hull
When homeward from the offing flies the gull,
With screams borne inland by the blast; and when
Sea-coots play round the margin of the fen;
The heron quits the marsh where she was bred
And soars upon a cloud far overhead.
[86]Following Keightley’s Commentary, which is the best we possess on Georg. i. 351-423.
[87]Aen. xii. 473. Mr. Mackail translates: “As when a black swallow flits through some rich lord’s spacious house, and circles in flight in the lofty halls, gathering her tiny food for sustenance to her twittering nestlings, and now swoops down the spacious colonnades, now round the wet ponds,” &c.
[88]Aen. ix. 564; xi. 721, 751; xii. 247.
[89] As in the poplar-shade a nightingale
Mourns her lost young, which some relentless swain,
Spying, from the nest has torn unfledged, but she
Wails the long night, and perched upon a spray
With sad insistence pipes her dolorous strain,
Till all the region with her wrongs o’erflows.
—Georg. iv. 511.
[90]Aen. vi. 309. “Multitudinous as leaves fall dropping in the forests at autumn’s earliest frost, or birds swarm landward from the deep gulf, when the chill of the year routs them over seas and drives them to sunny lands.”
