even then the plaintive warbling of the Robin is heard; as if to remind man that, amidst all the apparent desolation, Nature is not dead, but only sleeps, like the Beauty in the wood, to awake with all her former charms renewed. May, 1838. SINGING BIRDS.-VISITERS. "Glad moment is it when the throng Of warblers in full concert strong, Strive and not vainly strive to rout The lagging shower, and force coy Phœbus out; WORDSWORTH. How different has the season been from that which frowned in 1838 ? In the present year the honest ancient severity of winter bringing to our comparatively open southern waters clouds of hyperborean web-footed fowl, has been followed by a good old-fashioned spring, with the hawthorn in bloom, and even the oak-leaf out, near London, early in May such a spring as we remember in our childhood, when the live-long day was passed in the balmy open air. How tranquil was it to lie among the high and thick sward, already hained up for the scythe, on the verge of the orchard, then one sheet of blossom, looking askant at the insects in their gold-be-dropped and gorgeouslyemblazoned coats, climbing up the stalks of the herbage to gain vantage for their flight, or gazing into the clear blue heaven above in speculation whether the mote, all but invisible, were the lark, whose carol, mellowed by distance, fell upon the ear, while the little sister, near at hand -"As in the shining grass she sat conceal'd, Sang to herself;" and then the importance with which we returned to the house, big with the secret that we had discovered the nest of some errant turkey or guinea-hen, which all the acuteness and experience of the dairy-maid had failed to detect. Those were happy days :-but this is prosing; and we proceed to fulfil our promise of passing rapidly in review those melodious visiters who hasten from foreign lands to make the hedge-rows, orchards, and gardens of these fortunate islands their nuptial bowers. This is no place for physiological discussion, and our readers may be assured that they are not about to be drawn into a dissertation on the general organization of the feathered tribes; but there are few who have thought at all on the subject who have not been struck with the provision against the entire loss of progeny which would otherwise arise from the acts of those who rob nests for profit or wantonness. The eggs abstracted from the nests of the Phasianidæ,* Tetraonidæ,t Plovers, and a long list of others, are frequently replaced by the females, as long as the number appears to be incomplete. The pilferings of the schoolboy bear hard upon the constitutions of the Merulidæ‡ and the smaller birds; but, unless nature is quite exhausted by repeated robberies, the bereaved parents set about constructing a new nest, finish it, and replenish it. How is this effected? By one of those beautiful adaptations which meet the zoologist at every turn, and bring home to his heart the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator. On the breast of the sitting hen is a plexus, or net-work of blood-vessels, which are completely filled during the time of incubation; but, as long as there is a demand for eggs, and the bird goes on laying, the blood is directed internally, in order to secure the supply till the full complement is laid. When that is accomplished, the blood is no longer sent inwards, but is determined to the plexus on the breast; and no doubt the smooth and rounded surfaces of the eggs are soothing to the heated bosom of the mother, making her apparently hard and close confinement a labour of pleasure as well as love. We shall have occasion in the course of this sketch to present some striking instances which show that among other mental powers-yes, mental, for it is certain that birds are gifted with something beyond mere instinct-the songsters who visit us in the season of love, joy, and hope, have very retentive memories. Year after year, if they escape the ravages of the hawk, or of the still more destructive gun, the same pair of visiters will return to the identical nest in its cosy nook, if rude hands have not destroyed the comfortable little home. By those who respect their loves and domestic arrangements, our feathered summer visiters are looked for as friends returning from a far country, and their first appearance on some warm dewy spring morning at the trellis of the cottage door, or the ivied window, or in the wellknown laburnum or lilac, is hailed by true lovers of nature with a thrill of pleasure. The songsters themselves seem hardly less Pheasants, common fowls, &c. † Grouse, partridges, &c. Blackbirds and thrushes. pleased when they find all right; and while they warble right merrily, peer down through the open window with their bright little eyes, as who should say, "there you all are at breakfast in your old places, good luck t'ye." In passing our feathered friends in rapid review, we think it better not to notice them in the order of their coming, but rather according to their powers of song; thus the Muscicapidæ, or fly-catchers, and the swallows, have no great pretensions to music, though musical to a certain degree they are, and we will commence with them. The spotted fly-catcher (Muscicapa grisola) can hardly be said to be a song-bird, for a chirping call-note forms his whole musical stock; but it is one of the most welcome and constant of our migratory birds, and the untiring zeal with which it clears the neighbourhood of small insects, such as gnats, make it a cherished guest. Perched on the top of a stake, or a post, or an upper gate-bar, or an outlying branch, the bird remains motionless, till some luckless insect, humming his lay as carelessly as his brother "water-fly," the dandy, hums the favourite air of the last new opera, comes within his range: off darts the fly-catcher, finishing the song and the life of the performer at the same instant, and returns to his station to repeat the exterminating process through the whole day. He is one of our latest visiters, seldom arriving till late in May,* and his quiet hair-brown coat and his dull white waistcoat, spotted and streaked with dark brown, are rarely seen till the oak leaf has well burst the bud. As soon as the bird arrives, it sets about the work of incubation. 1 "The fly-catcher," says the inimitable author of the "History of Selborne," "is of all our summer birds the most mute and the most familiar; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine or sweetbriar against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a wall, or on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a door, where people are going in and out all day long." We observed a pair for several years, which built in a trellised porch covered with woodbine and the white sweet-scented clematis, undisturbed by the constant ingress and egress of the inmates many of whom were children, or the early and late arrivals and departures of guests. Few places indeed come amiss to this familiar bird as a locality for its nest. Thus a pairrather improvident architects those-built on the head of a garden rake, which had been left near a cottage. Two others made their nest in a bird-cage, which was suspended, with the door open, from a branch in a garden. Another pair chose the angle * In White's Calendar, the earliest and latest periods noted, are May 10 and May 30 in Markwick's, April 29 and May 21. † Magazine of Nat. Hist. vol. i. + Blackwall. of a lamp-post in a street at Leeds, and there they reared their young.* * A nest with five eggs was found on the ornamental crown of a lamp near Portland-place,† and this nest was seen by the wellknown author of " British Birds and British Fishes," on the top of the lamp at the office of Woods and Forests, in Whitehall-place. "Of three cup-shaped nests before me," says Mr. Yarrell, "one is formed, on the outside, of old dark-coloured moss, mixed with roots, the lining of grass stems, with only two or three white feathers; the second has the bottom and outside of fresh green moss, lined with a few grass bents, long horse-hairs, and several mottled feathers, frequently those of a turkey; the third is similar to the last in the outside, but lined with long horsehairs, wool, and feathers." As a proof of the memory of this species, and something more, we may nention a fact recorded by Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq., the late lamented president of the Horticultural Society of London. A pair built in his stove for many successive years. Whenever the thermometer in the house was above 72°, the bird quitted her eggs; but as soon as the mercury sunk below that point, she resumed her seat upon them. The four or five eggs of this interesting little bird are white, with a bluish tinge, spotted with a faint red, and the worthy male is most assiduous in feeding the female while she sits; and that as late as nine o'clock at night.‡ One word in favour of these poor little birds, which are too often mercilessly shot as fruit-eaters. That they may be seen about cherry and raspberry trees, when the fruit is ripe, there is no doubt, but Mr. Yarrell observes-correctly in our opinionthat they seem rather to be induced to visit fruit-trees for the sake of the flies which the luscious fruits attract, than for the sake of the fruits themselves, since, he tells us, on examination of the stomachs of fly-catchers killed under such circumstances, no remains of fruit were found. But whence comes this insect destroyer, so common on every lawn, and in every garden? From the arid regions of Africa, where its range extends to the west, and even to the south, as far as the Cape. In the pied fly-catcher (Muscicapa atricapilla), a much more rare visitant, we have the powers of song more developed. Its notes, according to Mr. Blackwall, are varied and pleasing, and are compared by Mr. Dovaston to those of the redstart. The male of this pretty species, with his deep black back, and under covering of pure white, with which the forehead and wings are also marked, is, together with its more sombre partner, comparatively Atkinson. Compendium of Ornithology. † Jesse. + White. abundant near the charming lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland. Seven or eight eggs, of a uniform pale blue, are laid in a rather inartificial nest of grass and roots, dead bents, and hair, in holes of decayed trees, oaks principally. In feeding, it resembles the common fly-catcher. The south of Europe, particularly the countries that border the Mediterranean, abound with this species. In the Hirundinidæ, or swallow family, we have another form of insect-scourge. The attacks of the fly-catcher are desultory, and may be compared to those of an enemy in ambush; but the swallows come upon the insect hosts in legions, charging and dashing through their ranks with their open fly-traps of mouths. The ranks close, as does a column of infantry or cavalry through which the cannon has cut a lane; but the winged foe wheels round again, and as the "insect youth" dance in the sun, annihilates hundreds. The survivors, like their brother mortals, pursue their dance, and in the midst of life are in death. It may seem strange at first sight to see the Hirundinidæ mentioned as songsters; but to say nothing of the exhilarating cry of the swift as he darts round the steeple, or of the twitter of the window-swallow, and the bank or sand-martin-sounds which all assist in making the air musical, and "aid the full concert"-the chimney-swallow, Hirundo rustica, can warble, softly indeed, but sweetly. "The swallow," says White, "is a delicate songster, and in soft sunny weather sings both perching and flying: on trees in a kind of concert, and on chimney-tops.' This charming bird, the harbinger of spring, has been welcomed in all countries, and will be so welcomed as long as the seasons last. The poets of all ages have hailed his advent; and our own Davy, with whose deep philosophy the poetical temperament was strongly mingled, has pronounced his history in a few bright and true words: "He lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn for the myrtle and orange-groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa.* The Hirundinide which visit this country are, the species last above mentioned, the martin (Hirundo urbica), the sand-martin (Hirundo riparia), the common swift (Hirundot apus), and—but very rarely the alpine or white-bellied swift (Cypselus alpinus). The chimney-swallow makes his appearance amongst us earlier or later, according to the mildness or severity of the season, but the 10th of April appears to be the general average of the time of its arrival; the earliest period noted by White is the 26th of March, * Salmonia. † Cypselus of modern authors. |