A Gathering of Birds Read online

  This sound lives in memory still, but is heard no more, or will shortly be heard no more, on earth, since this bird too is now on the list of the “next candidates for extinction.” It seems incredible that in this short space of time, comprised in the years of one man’s life, such a thing can be. But here on my writing-table is the book of the first authority in America on this subject: William T. Hornaday, in Our Vanishing Wild Life, gives a list of the eleven species which have become wholly extinct in North America since the middle of the last century, most of them in very recent years; also a partial or preliminary list of the species, numbering twenty-one, now on the verge of extinction. The first list includes that beautiful bird, the Eskimo curlew—the fellow-traveller and companion of the golden plover referred to in this chapter. The list of those now verging on extinction includes the golden plover, upland plover, buff-breasted and pectoral sandpiper. This last species is not mentioned above, but it was perhaps the commonest of all the small sandpipers in my time, and from August to March any year was to be met with by any stream or pool of water all over the pampas.

  All this incalculable destruction of bird life has come about since the seventies of the last century, and is going on now despite the efforts of those who are striving, by promoting legislation and by all other possible means, to save “the remnant.” But, alas! the forces of brutality, the Caliban in man, are proving too powerful; the lost species are lost for all time, and a thousand years of the strictest protection—a protection it would be impossible to impose on a free people, Calibans or not—would not restore the still existing bird life to the abundance of half a century ago.

  The beautiful has vanished and returns not.

  JACKDAWS

  DAWS are more abundant in the west and southwest of England generally than in any other part of the kingdom. No county in England is richer in noble churches, and no kind of building seems more attractive to the “ecclesiastical daw” than the great Perpendicular tower of the Glastonbury type, which is so common here. Of the old towns which the bird loves and inhabits in numbers, Wells comes first.

  The cathedral daws, on account of their numbers, are the most important of the feathered inhabitants of Wells. These city birds are familiarly called “Bishop’s Jacks,” to distinguish them from the “Ebor Jacks,” the daws that in large numbers have their home and breeding-place in the neighbouring cliffs, called the Ebor Rocks.

  The Ebor daws are but the first of a succession of colonies extending along the side of the Cheddar valley. A curious belief exists among the people of Wells and the district, that the Ebor Jacks make better pets than the Bishop’s Jacks. If you want a young bird you have to pay more for one from the rocks than from the cathedral. I was assured that the cliff bird makes a livelier, more intelligent and amusing pet than the other. A similar notion exists, or existed, at Hastings, where there was a saying among the fisher folks and other natives that “a Grainger daa is worth a ha’penny more than a castle daa.” The Grainger rock, once a favourite breeding-place of the daws at that point, has long since fallen into the sea, and the saying has perhaps died out.

  At Wells most of the cathedral birds—a hundred couples at least—breed in the cavities behind the stone statues, standing, each in its niche, in rows, tier above tier, on the west front. In April, when the daws are busiest at their nest-building, I have amused myself early every morning watching them flying to the front in a constant procession, every bird bringing his stick. This work is all done in the early morning, and about half-past eight o’clock a man comes with a barrow to gather up the fallen sticks—there is always a big barrowful, heaped high, of them; and if not thus removed the accumulated material would in a few days form a rampart or zareba, which would prevent access to the cathedral on that side.

  It has often been observed that the daw, albeit so clever a bird, shows a curious deficiency of judgment when building, in his persistent efforts to carry in sticks too big for the cavity. Here, for instance, each morning in turning over the litter of fallen material I picked up sticks measuring from four or five to seven feet in length. These very long sticks were so slender and dry that the bird was able to lift and to fly with them; therefore, to his corvine mind, they were suitable for his purpose. It comes to this: the daw knows a stick when he sees one, but the only way of testing its usefulness to him is to pick it up in his beak, then to try to fly with it. If the stick is six feet long and the cavity will only admit one of not more than eighteen inches, he discovers his mistake only on getting home. The question arises: Does he continue all his life long repeating this egregious blunder? One can hardly believe that an old, experienced bird can go on from day to day and year to year wasting his energies in gathering and carrying building materials that will have to be thrown away in the end—that he is, in fact, mentally on a level with the great mass of meaner beings who forget nothing and learn nothing. It is not to be doubted that the daw was once a builder in trees, like all his relations, with the exception of the cliff-breeding chough. He is even capable of reverting to the original habit, as I know from an instance which has quite recently come to my knowledge. In this case a small colony of daws have been noticed for several years past breeding in stick nests placed among the clustering foliage of a group of Scotch firs. This colony may have sprung from a bird hatched and reared in the nest of a carrion crow or magpie. Still, the habit of breeding in holes must be very ancient, and considering that the jackdaw is one of the most intelligent of our birds, one cannot but be astonished at the rude, primitive, blundering way in which the nest-building work is generally performed. The most we can see by carefully watching a number of birds at work is that there appears to be some difference with regard to intelligence between bird and bird. Some individuals blunder less than others; it is possible that these have learned something from experience; but if that be so, their better way is theirs only, and their young will not inherit it.

  One morning at Wells as I stood on the cathedral green watching the birds at their work, I witnessed a rare and curious scene—one amazing to an ornithologist. A bird dropped a stick—an incident that occurred a dozen times or oftener any minute at that busy time; but in this instance the bird had no sooner let the stick fall than he rushed down after it to attempt its recovery, just as one may see a sparrow drop a feather or straw, and then dart down after it and often recover it before it touches the ground. The heavy stick fell straight and fast on to the pile of sticks already lying on the pavement, and instantly the daw was down and had it in his beak, and thereupon laboriously flew up to his nesting-place, which was forty or fifty feet high. At the moment that he rushed down after the falling stick two other daws that happened to be standing on ledges above dropped down after him, and copied his action by each picking up a stick and flying with it to their nests. Other daws followed suit, and in a few minutes there was a stream of descending and ascending daws at that spot, every ascending bird with a stick in his beak. It was curious to see that although sticks were lying in hundreds on the pavement along the entire breadth of the west front, the daws continued coming down only at that spot where the first bird had picked up the stick he had dropped. By and by, to my regret, the birds suddenly took alarm at something and rose up, and from that moment not one descended.

  Presently the man came round with his rake and broom and barrow to tidy up the place. Before beginning his work he solemnly made the following remark: “Is it not curious, sir, considering the distance the birds go to get their sticks, and the work of carrying them, that they never, by any chance, think to come down and pick up what they have dropped!” I replied that I had heard the same thing said before, and that it was in all the books; and then I told him of the scene I had just witnessed. He was very much surprised, and said that such a thing had never been witnessed before at that place. It had a disturbing effect on him, and he appeared to me to resent this departure from their old ancient conservative ways on the part of the cathedral birds.

  For many mornings a
fter I continued to watch the daws until the nest-building was finished, without witnessing any fresh outbreak of intelligence in the colony: they had once more shaken down into the old inconvenient traditional groove, to the manifest relief of the man with the broom and barrow.

  Bath, like Wells, is a city that has a considerable amount of nature in its composition, and is set down in a country of hills, woods, rocks and streams, and is therefore, like the other, a city loved by daws and by many other wild birds.

  Daws are seen and heard all over the town, but are most common about the Abbey, where they soar and gambol and quarrel all day long, and when they think that nobody is looking, drop down to the streets to snatch up and carry off any eatable-looking object that catches their eye.

  Now the daw is capable at times of emitting both hoarse and harsh notes, and the same may perhaps be said of a majority of birds; but his usual note—the cry or caw varied and inflected a hundred ways, which we hear every day and all day long where daws abound—is neither harsh like the crow’s, nor hoarse like the rook’s. It is, in fact, as unlike the harsh, grating caw of the former species as the clarion call of the cock is unlike the grunting of swine. It may not be described as bell-like or metallic, but it is loud and clear, with an engaging wildness in it, and, like metallic sounds, far-reaching; and of so good a quality that very little more would make it ring musically.

  Sometimes when I go into this ancient abbey church, or into some cathedral, and seating myself, and looking over a forest of bonnets, see a pale young curate with a black moustache, arrayed in white vestments, standing before the reading-desk, and hear him gabbling some part of the Service in a continuous buzz and rumble that roams like a gigantic bluebottle through the vast dim interior, then I, not following him—for I do not know where he is, and cannot find out however much I should like to—am apt to remember the daws out of doors, and to think that it would be well if that young man would but climb up into the highest tower, or on to the roof, and dwell there for the space of a year listening to them; and that he would fill his mouth with polished pebbles, and medals, and coins and seals and seal-rings, and small porcelain cats and dogs, and little silver pigs, and other objects from the chatelaines of his lady admirers, and strive to imitate that clear, penetrating sound of the bird’s voice, until he had mastered the rare and beautiful arts of voice production and distinct understandable speech.

  Daws and starlings search the backs of cattle and sheep for ticks and other parasites, and it is plain that their visits are welcome. Here a joint interest unites bird and beast; it is the nearest approach to symbiosis among the higher vertebrates of this country, but is far less advanced than the partnership which exists between the rhinoceros bird and the rhinoceros or buffalo, and between the spur-winged plover and crocodile in Africa.

  One day I was walking by a meadow, adjoining the Bishop’s palace at Wells, where several cows were grazing, and noticed a little beyond them a number of rooks and starlings scattered about. Presently a flock of about forty of the cathedral jackdaws flew over me and slanted down to join the other birds, when all at once two daws dropped out of the flock on to the back of the cow standing nearest to me. Immediately five more daws followed, and the crowd of seven birds began eagerly pecking at the animal’s hide. But there was not room enough for them to move freely; they pushed and struggled for a footing, throwing their wings out to keep their balance, looking like a number of hungry vultures fighting for places on a carcass; and soon two of the seven were thrown off and flew away. The remaining five, although much straitened for room, continued for some time scrambling over the cow’s back, busy with their beaks and apparently very much excited over the treasure they had discovered. It was amusing to see how the cow took their visit; sinking her body as if about to lie down and broadening her back, and dropping her head until her nose touched the ground, she stood perfectly motionless, her tail stuck out behind like a pump-handle. At length the daws finished their feeding and quarrelling and flew away; but for some minutes the cow remained immovable in the same attitude, as if the rare and delightful sensation of so many beaks prodding and so many sharp claws scratching her hide had not yet worn off.

  Deer, too, like cows, are very grateful to the daw for its services. In Savernake Forest I once witnessed a very pretty little scene. I noticed a hind lying down by herself in a grassy hollow, and as I passed her at a distance of about fifty yards it struck me as singular that she kept her head so low down that I could only see the top of it on a level with her back. Walking round to get a better sight, I saw a jackdaw standing on the turf before her, very busily pecking at her face. With my glass I was able to watch his movements very closely; he pecked round her eyes, then her nostrils, her throat, and in fact every part of her face; and just as a man when being shaved turns his face this way and that under the gentle guiding touch of the barber’s fingers, and lifts up his chin to allow the razor to pass beneath it, so did the hind raise and lower and turn her face about to enable the bird to examine and reach every part with his bill. Finally the daw left the face, and, moving round, jumped on to the deer’s shoulders and began a minute search in that part; having finished this he jumped on to the head and pecked at the forehead and round the bases of the ears. The pecking done, he remained for some seconds sitting perfectly still, looking very pretty with the graceful red head for a stand, the hind’s long ears thrust out on either side of him. From his living perch he sprang into the air and flew away, going close to the surface; then slowly the deer raised her head and gazed after her black friend—gratefully, and regretting his departure, I could not but think.

  II

  JOHN MUIR

  SOME of the very earliest of John Muir’s recollections were of birds. He remembers his rage and grief when as a very small child in Scotland he saw a soldier knock down a song bird’s nest, and stuff the fledglings in his pocket, to sell them to a bird catcher. The lad would spend hours upon the moors watching and listening to the skylarks. The first call of the cuckoo in the spring, the first swallow that, for a child, makes summer, were indelible impressions of his boyhood. For he was born, in 1838, near Dunbar, on the Firth of Forth, and that is a country which belongs to the curlews, the murres and the gulls, and the gannets of the Bass Rock.

  His schooling would today be considered criminal pedagogy. It consisted principally in memorizing Latin grammar and in weekly and daily encounters with the “tawse.” At home his father, a Calvanistic fanatic, taught him, literally at the end of a strap, to repeat Bible verses, so that he could recite the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation without stopping.

  But Muir thanks his lessons. He believed that his memory—an invaluable asset for a naturalist—was trained far beyond that of most men, and that by knowing with complete thoroughness a little literature but all of that great, the best was done toward the formation of his style.

  When he was eleven years old his father removed to Wisconsin. He calls this a “sudden plash into pure wilderness.” For the oak openings and prairies of Wisconsin in 1849 were still the America such as European boys delight to read of in Fenimore Cooper. The red man’s steps had not quite passed from the land; the sandhill cranes filled the heavens with their cries, the passenger pigeons darkened it in their passing, and from the wild prairie blooming with pasque flowers, beloved by the boy John, came the booming of the prairie chickens. He recalls his raptures over the beauty of redheaded woodpeckers, the ghostly sound of the whippoorwill in the lush twilights of earliest summer, the swirl of the nighthawks past his shoulder, the ringing jingling raptures of bobolinks and redwings and meadowlarks.

  Life at home was, however, anything but idyllic. Tough prairie sod and tough hickory and burr oak woods had to be subdued, and his father’s zeal was all for making a prim and thrifty farm like an Old World garden patch, out of a great tract of recalcitrant wilderness. The boy had to work at hard labor from before daylight till dark, even when sick with the measles. He was compelled to dig a deep well by
hand, and to this exertion he attributed his lifelong shortness of stature; he dared not go to the spring for a drink for fear of being seen from the house, where his father was engaged in Bible study and picking out passages deriding the way of Martha.

  From this atmosphere the boy broke away at the earliest possible moment, to attend the University of Wisconsin. Earning his own way, enduring great poverty while his father was sending ample sums for the distribution of the Bible to Igorots, young Muir early interested himself in geological studies and mechanics. A chance acquaintance showed him the family relationships of a locust blossom, and this seemed suddenly, as systematic botany has done for so many, to open a door into the antechamber of all Nature. He immediately rushed into the field and began collecting. His excursions took him farther and farther. Attendance at college was forgotten; he supported himself by teaching school, taking odd jobs in factories, and working as a harvest hand, and in this way he widened his scope until he was ready at last to set forth upon his walking trip from Kentucky to Florida. This famous excursion has been commemorated in A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf.

  Without returning home, Muir set out for California. He arrived in San Francisco by boat in 1869 and at once inquired the quickest way of quitting the city. Tramping over the coastal ranges by the Pacheco Pass he beheld for the first time the Great Central Valley of California trooping with flowers and, etched far on the eastern horizon, the snowy summits of the Sierra. Thither he set out, always afoot (for it was his favorite mode of travel) and for the next decade he devoted himself almost entirely to Sierran Nature, studying flowers, trees, glaciers, streams, rocks, birds and mammals, sleeping in hollow Sequoia gigantea trees, sharing berries with bears, and brook water with ouzels. In this way, there is no doubt, he became conversant with mountain life and physiography, as few have ever done; there was not a canyon he did not explore, not an alpine meadow of whose flowers he did not gather; he visited every grove of the Big Trees, and discovered the presence, hitherto unknown, of “living” or moving glaciers in the Sierra. He was also the first to perceive that the strange and beautiful U-shape of the Yosemite valley was due to the carving by vanished and much greater glaciers of the ice age. This original contribution drew the admiration of Agassiz and Joseph Le Conte. The latter came to see for himself, and went away spreading the fame of a most original genius, part scientist, part poet, part man and part Nature itself in human form.