THE BIRDS THAT STAY.
IN the Vision of the Lots and Lives, when the souls chose their careers on a fresh register before taking another chance in the world above, Ulysses chose that of a stay-at-home proprietor, with a resolve, born of experience, never again to roam. If Plato had made a Myth of the Birds he might have alleged some such reason to explain how it is that while most of them are incessant wan- derers, ever flitting uncertain between momentary points of rest, some few remain fixed and constant, as if they had sworn at some distant date never more to make trial of the wine-dark sea. In the still November woods, when the vapours curl like smoke among the dripping boughs, leaving a diamond on each sprouting bud where next year's leaf is hid ; by the moorland river, on bright December mornings, when the grayling are lying on the shallows below the ripple where the rock breaks the surface ; by the frozen shore where the land-springs lie fast, drawn into icicles or smeared in slippery slabs on the cliff faces, and hoar-frost powders the black sea-wrack ; on the lawns of gardens, where the winter roses linger and open dew-drenched and rain-washed in the watery sunbeams,—there we see, hear, and welcome the birds that stay. Then and there we note their fewness, their tame- ness, and feel that they are really fellow-count ,y men, native to the soil. The list of these home-loving birds is short; and those commonly seen are only a few of the total. In a stroll, rod in hand, to fish for grayling in winter by the Wharfe or the Nidd, or any Northern stream, the absence of the birds which flocked along the banks in summer and spring when the Mayfly or March browns were out is the first change to strike the quick senses of the true fisherman. The wagtails, sedge- warblers, whitethroats, coots, dabchicks, sandpipers, and all the little river birds are gone. So are the greater number of the blackbirds, thrushes, and missel-thrushes. All he sees, his daily companions by the deserted river, are the wren creeping in the flood drift, the tits working over the alder bushes to see if any seeds are left in the cones, and the water-ousels. The water-ousels are his constant and charming companions, true to the mountain river as in the days of Merlin and Vivian, busy as big black and white bees as they flit up-stream and down-stream, flying boldly into the water. falls, dropping silently from mossy stones into the clear brown eddies, singing when the sunbeams shine and warm the crag- tops, and even floating and singing on the water, like aquatic robins. -The ousels must have been the sacred birds of Tana, the Water Goddess, the ever attached votaries of her dripping and rustic shrines.
By the winter shore, untrodden by any but the fisher going down at the ebb to seek king-crab for bait, or by his children, gathering driftwood on the stones, one little bird stays ever faithful to the same short range of shore. This is the rock-pipit,---the " sea-lark " of Brovrning's verse. But that is a summer song. It is not only when the cliff "Sets his bones, To bask i' the sun," but in the short winter days, that the sea-lark keeps constant to the fringe of ocean. It is the most narrowly local and stay-at-home of all birds, never leaving the very fringe and margin, not of sea, but of land, haunting only the last edge and precipice of the coast, nesting on those upright walls of granite or chalk, and creeping, flying, and twittering among the crumbling stones, the water-worn boulders, and the tufts of sea-pink and samphire. When the winter storms slam the roaring billows against the cliff faces and the spray flies up a hundred feet from the exploding mass, the little sea-larks only mount to higher levels of the cliff, never coming inland or forsaking its salt-spattered resting-place. Compared with these home-loving birds all the gulls are wanderers, even though they do not desert our shores. Of the rock- fowl, the puffins fly straight away to the Mediterranean, and the guillemots and razorbills go out to sea and leave their nesting crags. Only the cormorants stay at home, flying in to roost on the same lofty crag every autumn and winter night, from the fishing grounds which the sea-crows have frequented for longer years even than the "many-wintered crow" of inland rookeries has his fat and smiling fields.
The discovery that rooks, with their reputation for stamich attachment to locality, are regular and irre- pressible migrants, crossing from Denmark and Holland to England, and froni England to Ireland, has been fol- lowed by other curious revelations about the mobility of what were believed to be stationary birds. Our own be- loved garden robin, whom we feed till he becomes a sturdy beggar, though he pays us with a song, stays with us, as we
know, because he applies regularly for his rations. But he sends all his children away to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and on our coasts flights of migrant robins, whom either their parents, or the bad weather, have sent from Norway over the foam, arrive all through the autumn. Even the jenny wrens migrate to some extent.
Because we see birds of certain kinds near our farms. gardens, and hedges it does not follow that these are those which were there in summer and spring. Such common finches as the greenfinches and chaffinches migrate in immense flocks, and over vast distances, considering their short wings and small size. In the gardens and shrubberies round the houses the parent robins stay. So do some of the black- birds, the thrushes (except in very hard weather),• the hedge-sparrow, the nuthatch (more in evidence in winter than at any other time, and a firm believer in eleemosynary nuts), all the tits, except the long-tailed tit, a little gipsy bird wandering in family hordes, and the crested and marsh tits (dwellers in the pine forest and sedge-beds), and the wood pigeon. 0e,casionally that shy bird, the hawfinch, is seen on a wet, quiet day picking up white-beam kernels and seeds. Except this, every one of the garden birds comes to be fed, and is well known and appreciated. It is in the woods and the hedges of the rain-soaked meadows that the general absence of bird life in winter is most marked, and the presence of the few which stay most appreciated. Those who, on sport intent, go round the hedges in November and December, or wait in rides while the woods are driven, or lie up quietly in the big covers for a shot at wood pigeons in the evening, are almost startled by the tameness and indifference of the birds, eagerly feeding so as to make the most of the short dark days. When the hedges are beaten for rabbits the bullfinches appear in families, their beautiful grey backs and exquisite rosy breasts looking their very best against the dark-brown, purply twigs. Another home-staying bird of the hedgerows, or rather of the hedgerow timber, is the tree creeper. It has no local habitation, being a bird which migrates in a drifting way from tree to tree, and so bound by no ties to mother-earth. But it is in the woods that the stay- at-home birds are most in evidence in winter. There they find abundant food, and there they make their home. The wood- peckers, the magpie, and the jay, the brown owl, the sparrow- hawk, the kestrel, the pheasant, the long-tailed tits, and all the reat of the tribe ; and in the clearings where the teazle grows, the goldfuiches feed. The barn owls and brown owls both stay with 1113. So does the long- eared owl. But the short-eared owl is a regular migrant, coming over in flights like woodcocks. No one has satis- factorily answered the question why there are sedentary species and migratory species so closely allied in habits and food that the quest for a living must be ruled as outside the motive for migration.
If the long-eared owl can remain and find a living all the year round in the copses on our downs, why should not the short-eared owl make a practice of what is its occasional custom and nest in the fens and marshes ? If the kingfisher can find a living and abundant fish in our rivers and brooks, why does the da,bchick migrate? The migration is only a partial one; but it vanishes from most of the Northern pools and returns almost on the same date. Perhaps a conclusion might be hazarded from the behaviour of wild migratory birds which have become semi-domesticated. In Canada, the largest and best known of the wild geese is the black-necked Canadian goose. It is a regular migrant. The Indians believe it brings little birds on its back when it comes. At Holkham, where a large flock of these is acclimatised, but lives under perfectly wild conditions, the Canadian geese never attempt to migrate, though they often fly out on to the sands at ebb-tide. They show less disposition to leave the estate than the herons in the park. Yet during the winter they feed every day with flocks of wild geese in the marshes. These geese fly every spring away to the Lapland mountains or the tundras, and could show the Canada geese the way northwards if they wished to follow. The conclusion is that the Canada geese have no desire for change ; and the reason that other birds do not migrate is probably the same.
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