Country Life
The writing lark
Peter Quince
There are gains as well as losses in the fluctuations of the wild-life Population. Not so many years ago, the yellow-hammer was one of the commonest of birds in my Part of England. Almost every Fledge seemed to have its resident Pair, and every lane or footpath echoed to its soft, reproachful s°11g. About ten years ago the numbers began, visibly, to fall !Way. After a time the yellow"arnmer became quite rare here.
It was the sort of change which even those who only motor around the district could notice, since these birds seem to like roadsides. Any observant motorist realised that whereas there used to be frequent sightings of yellowhammers along our lanes, often or parties of them, they were no longer to be seen. We put this disappearance down to the grubbingup of hedges, or the use of insecticides, or unfavourable weather, or any other adverse influence that came to mind. Whatever the cause, the yellow-hammers seemed to have retreated from the landscape.
But this year they are back again at almost their former strength. I noticed that in 1972 there were a little more in evidence, and now they have turned up all over the place. It is rather mysterious. Nothing has changed that I can think of to make the habitat more kindly to them. There are no more hedges, the pattern of farming has not altered. But if the cause is obscure, the result is apparent enough. This charming little bird has returned, in this locality at least, to something like the status it enjoyed when Thomas Bewick, in his account of the wild birds of pre-industrial England, wrote, "This bird is common in every lane and on every hedge throughout the country, flitting before the traveller as he passes along the road, or uttering its simple and frequentlyrepeated monotone on the hedges by the wayside."
The change is particularly noti ceable because the species is so easily identified. There is no mis-* taking its colouring of bright yel low and chestnut. Even if there were any doubt, its song, modest though it is, is quite distinctive.
There have been various attempts to reproduce different birds' songs in words, as aids to identification — few of them. in my experience,
of much assistance in practice. The yellow-hammer is the exception. Whoever it was, in the dim past, who first rendered its call as " little-bit-of-bread-and-noL cheese" hit upon something so neatly apt that it has survived in country lore through many generations. It is, as near as can be, exactly what the yellow-hammer is saying as it hops restlessly along a hedge in front of a passerby.
I remember being told by a farm worker that this call got on his nerves frightfully after it had been repeated a few hundred times as he laboured in a field. I can understand this. In the same way, a cuckoo incessantly calling at fairly close range can become something of a bore, especially if you are busy with hot and heavy work on a warm day. But nowadays there are not many solitary farm workers plying the hoe in the fields; they are far more likely to be sitting on a tractor, cut off from all bird song, irritating or otherwise, by the din of the machine.
I have yet to find a yellow-hammer's nest this year but I hope to do so before the season is over. They are snug structures, neatly put together, made chiefly of grasses and other stalks, and constructed either on the ground or low in a hedge or bush. The eggs are usually marked with random patterns of fine lines and scribbles, not at all unlike what has gained acceptance in art galleries as one school of modern painting.
These markings account for some of the old nicknames the yellow-hammer has been given, notably Writing Lark, Scribbling Lark and Scribe. I suppose that is another reason for my liking for the species. No one in my trade . could look with entire disfavour on the Writing Lark.
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