BIRD - SONGS IN SPRING.
SPRING is the one season of the year when bird-language can be perfectly studied. The musical warblers are with us and all birds are in fall song, and while they watch over their nests they give vent to notes of alarm and anger which are not heard at other times. It is a study which naturally requires close and persistent observation and a great amount of patience, but any time expended in learning different notes, and tracing character in our feathered friends is amply repaid by the pleasure of the knowledge gained.
That birds use bad language is indisputable. Visit the vicinity of jenny-wren's nest in the garden-bank, and she will hop up on to the paling and expostulate with much indig- nation at the intrusion ; she will scold and rattle and pour forth the vials of her wrath upon you in a manner quite peculiar to herself. The wren's song is very loud for so small a bird, it is quick and bustling, and the little upright tail jerks with the exertion of singing, and emphasises the high notes. Birds betray their character in their song, as human beings do in conversation ; the willow-wren, for instance,— the next migrant to arrive after the chiff-chaff,—is a merry debonair songster, singing recklessly the whole day long, and his must be a gay, thoughtless character ; while the wood. wren is a delicate, plaintive bird, tired out by his long flight hither, and showing his weariness in every sad note of his song. He is called "the shaker of the woods," it is a great effort to him to sing, and he shakes as he gives his sibilant trill. Surely the coo of the turtle-dove betokens a peaceful nature; you never see one fussing or harrying or quarrelling ; they sit calmly up in the fir-tree, then take a solemn little fly, and return to coo on the same spot. Up in the air the white- throat sings in a fascinating attitude, and he evidently studies appearances and likes to show off his accomplishments, for not many birds sing while flying. The tree-pipit does ; he has a pretty manner of rising up as he sings, higher and higher until he reaches the topmost branch, then shoots up into the air, still singing as he flutters down, executing this scale of song and movement successfully over and over again. The song of the blackbird is a full, rich song, a false note can never be traced in it ; his is an honest, jovial nature, though never living on good terms with his mate. Drayton calls him the "mirthful merle," and the garden rings with his alarm. note when any enemy crosses his path or nears his nest. Many think the cuckoo has only the one familiar song, and do not realise the peculiar gurgle he has, which is much the same noise as a terrier makes when he is shaking a rat, while the female has quite a different note, a sort of laughing bubble uttered very quickly, which she preludes with a low, harsh sound. Every one knows the cuckoo's bad character, and how he does not even trouble to have a nest of his own. Of course it is impossible in a short space to trace the characters of all our common birds, the primwval teachers of melody. The bird key-note is to be traced in the songs and ballads of all the poets of olden days; poets of to-day only sing about birds—you cannot trace the tone of the actual bird-song in their work as you can in the past—but no poet can give you the blackcap's deliciously liquid note, or the nightingale's trill. Izaak Walton says, "She breathes such sweet music out of her intermittant throat, that it might make mankind to think that miracles have not ceased." Of course the nightingale is the greatest musician we have, a professional amongst songsters, "most musical, most melan- choly," as Milton writes. But no poet—though Tennyson reached as near perfection as possible—can convey the music of the thrush's solo in the chestnut at eventide when other birds are asleep.
It is curious to note in birds that those who go to bed first are often the last to get up ; take the sparrows for instance ; perhaps it is because they are such chattering, gossiping folk, and so need more rest, for they seem always to be chirping about nothing, and belong to a low caste with a greedy character, and no discrimination as to locality or class. The sparrow has nothing to recommend him, his nest is untidy, and his knowledge of architecture is nil, only the legendary leper was grateful to him. Those who listen to the songs of birds in the day-time and at eventide, and are content to sleep away the hours about sunrise, know little of the beauty and magni- tude of the great dawn-chorus—as it may be termed—from Nature's bird-opera, in which all the singers are in tune, and the harmony is complete. Early in the month of May, about 3 o'clock in the morning—an hour before sunrise—the wonderful strange silence and stillness of night is only broken by the rush of the river in the distance, restlessly flowing away to the sea, and even the breeze dies weary with fanning the firs. The hush is supreme, and the grass crisp and white, for Jack Frost has touched the garden with his finger-tips. Soon a moor-hen croaks his way home from the pasture, and a pheasant and wild-duck are heard in the wood and by the lake ; but they only mark the silence, as do the rooks cawing sleepily in the rookery, bidding the jackdaws good morning, as they mutually quarrel over their young. A chill, grey half-hour passes ; and slowly and quietly from the corn-field, beyond the river, a skylark rises into the air with feeble and uncertain song, but as he climbs the heavens with ever-widening circles of flight, the notes become more rich and clear, and perfect in timbre, until at length the whole valley beneath is flooded with a strain of exquisite melody. This is the first solo, the first pouring out of praise in honour to the new-born day. Shakespeare, in one of his most beautiful sonnets, speaks of this first song as a hymn:— " Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate."
When the notes of the lark have reached their highest pitch of excellence, the vagabond cuckoo is heard, less melodious but perhaps more dearly loved, and the two well-known notes are followed by the gurgle as if the bird were scolding his wife for being late. Two minutes later a blackbird gives the signal and begins to sing in the copse, and he is echoed in the garden by a throstle, then all of a sudden in a moment's space there is an awakening, a bewildering burst of song surrounds and almost deafens the listener, and fills him with amazement. A glorious chorus of blackbirds and thrashes crowds the air, a chorus unknown and undreamt of by those who only hear the day-songs. The birds vie with each other in singing their loudest and in trying who can lift the clearest voice to the dawn; it is a great burst of thanksgiving from all the feathered host, perfect in rhythm and melody, maddening in measure. And not only the blackbirds and throstles form the chorus, but the robin next joins in, then —as they awake in order—the blue-tit and the wren, hedge- sparrows and nut-hatches, the tiny willow-wren and golden. crests, and warblers; and after the first burst comes a duet in the pine-trees by the pigeon and turtle-dove, accompanied by the starling, who tries in his conceited way to imitate the rest. Still the chorus continues, a deafening din, like the noise in the parrot-house at the Zoo, only melodious. In a quarter of an hour there is again a partial silence ; the chorus is over, singers rest, the sun is rising in the east, and only solos by late sleepers are heard at intervals. It is a wonderful experience, this dawn-chorus, in its setting of grey, when the world slumbers, and the spring flowers, now heavily laden with dew, droop their heads as if they were saying their silent morning prayer to the rising sun. The birds seem fresher and their voices clearer at daybreak than at any other period of the day ; all their hearts are in their song, the work of feeding and building and nesting has not begun for the day, so there is nothing to call their attention away, no "trivial round" or commonplace alarm to distract them. In the chill air the chorus rises from earth to heaven in one overwhelming burst of song.
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