Part 38

The little creeper appears to move more in a groove than almost any other passerine bird, and is the most monotonous in its life; yet it never fails to interest, doubtless because in its appearance and actions it differs so much from other species. A small bird--one of the very smallest--with striped and mottled brown upper, and silvery white under, plumage; long and slim in figure, with a slender curved bill and stiff, pointed tail-feathers, it spends its life on the boles and branches of trees, exploring the rough bark with microscopic sight for the minute insects and their eggs and larvæ it subsists on, moving invariably upwards in a spiral from the roots to the branches by a series of rapid jerks; its appearance as it travels over the surface, against which it presses so closely, is that of a mammal rather than a bird--a small mottled brown mouse with an elongated body. It is more of a parasite on the trees that furnish it with food than any other bird of similar habits. Nuthatches and woodpeckers are not so dependent on their trade; their habits and diet vary to some extent with the seasons and the conditions they exist in. The creeper is a creeper on trees all the year round, and extracts all his sustenance from the bark. His procedure is always the same: no sooner has he got to the higher and smoother part of the hole up which he has travelled than he detaches himself from it, and drops slantingly through the air to the roots of another tree, to begin as before. The action is always accompanied with a little querulous note, which falls like an exclamation, and seems to express disgust at the miserable harvest he has gathered, or else satisfaction that yet another tree in the long weary tale of trees has been examined and left behind. The fanciful idea is formed that the creeper has not found happiness in his way of life: it is so laborious a way; he must live so close to the dull-hued and always shaded bark, and examine it so narrowly! The contrast of such a method with that of other small birds--warblers and wagtails, and swallows and finches--is very great. Feeding-time with them is song-time and play-time; their blithe voices and lively antics and motions show how happy they are in their lives. The creeper is a rather silent bird, but he utters in the pairing season a shrill, high-pitched call-note, and the same sound is emitted when the nest is in danger. The song, which is occasionally heard in spring, is composed of three or four shrill notes resembling the call-notes in sound.

The nest is a neat and pretty structure, and is often placed against the trunk of a tree, behind a piece of bark that has become partly detached. A hole in the trunk, or in a large branch, or in a cavity where a portion of the wood has rotted away, is often selected as a site. When the nest is made behind a piece of loose bark, the cavity is filled up with a quantity of fine twigs. Inside, the nest is formed of roots, moss, and sometimes feathers, and lined with fine strips of inside bark. Six to nine eggs are laid, pure white, with red spots. Two broods are reared in a season.

Goldfinch.

Carduelis elegans.

Back of the head, nape, and feathers round the base of the bill black; forehead and throat blood-red; cheeks, fore part of the neck, and under parts white; back and scapulars dark brown; wings variegated with black, white and yellow; tail black, tipped with white. Length, five inches.

* * * * *

We are rich in finches. No fewer than eighteen members of that family, including the snow-bunting, may be truly described as British. Among our passerine birds they excel in beauty of plumage, and by most persons the goldfinch, in his pretty coat of many colours--crimson, black, and white, and brown, and brilliant yellow--is regarded as the most beautiful of all. Certainly he is the most elegant in shape, the most graceful and engaging in his motions. It is charming to watch a small flock of these finches in the late summer, busy feeding on the roadside, or on some patch of waste land where the seeds, they best love are abundant, when they are seen clinging in various attitudes to the stalks, deftly picking off the thistle seed, and scattering the silvery down on the air. They are then pretty birds prettily occupied; and as they pass with easy, undulating flight from weed to weed, with musical call-notes and lively twitterings, bird following bird, they appear as gay and volatile as they are pretty.

They are found in suitable localities throughout England, and also inhabit Scotland and Ireland, but their distribution in the last two countries is much more local. During late summer and autumn they lead a gipsy life, incessantly wandering about the open country in search of their favourite seeds. They are also seen in winter, but few remain with us throughout the year, the majority passing over the Channel, to winter in a warmer climate. On their return in spring they come to the neighbourhood of houses, and build by preference in an apple or cherry tree in an orchard. The nest is well made, and composed of a great variety of materials--fine twigs, roots, grass, leaves, moss, and wool--and lined with hairs, feathers, and vegetable down. The four or five eggs are white, thinly spotted with reddish brown and pale purple.

As a vocalist the goldfinch does not rank high; but his lively, twittering song, uttered both on the perch and when passing through the air, and his musical call-notes, have a very pleasing effect, especially when the birds are seen in the open country in bright, sunny weather. Unhappily, it is not now very easy to see them, except in a few favoured localities, owing to their increasing rarity. For the goldfinch is a favourite cage-bird, and so long as bird-catching is permitted to flourish without restriction, this charming species will continue to decrease, as it has been decreasing for the last fifty years and upwards.

Siskin.

Chrysometris spinus.

Crown black; a broad yellow streak behind the eye; the plumage variegated with grey, dusky, and various shades of green; wings dusky, with a transverse greenish yellow bar, and a black one above, and a second black bar across the middle of the tertiaries; tail dusky, the base and edge of the inner web greenish yellow. Female: colours less bright, and no black on the head. Length, four and a half inches.

* * * * *

The siskin, or aberdevine, as it is also called, is known to us as a winter visitant, but it is better known as a cage than a free bird. In the British Islands it breeds in various places in Scotland, in pine and fir woods; it has also been found breeding in various localities in England and Wales. In Ireland it is not so common as in England. The siskin is a pretty, active, musical little bird, somewhat tit-like in its manner of seeking its food, its sociability, and the various positions it assumes in its search for small insects and seeds in the higher branches of a tree, or when clinging to the terminal twigs. As a caged bird his song is a small musical twittering; but in a wild state, in the pairing season, the male has a more charming performance, for he then soars about the tree, and, with fluttering wings and outspread tail, floats down singing to his perch.

The nest is built in a pine or fir tree at a considerable height from the ground, and so hidden as to make it very hard to find. There is a legend in some districts on the continent of Europe that the siskin places a small stone among its eggs, which renders the nest invisible. This legend reminds me of a belief of the peasants of southern South America, that the rail-like, spotted tinamou--a bird that easily eludes one’s sight among the grey and yellow herbage--has the faculty of making itself invisible. The primitive mind is much given to explanations of this kind.

The nest, placed as a rule in the fork of a horizontal branch, is composed of rootlets and moss, on a foundation of bents and twigs of heather, and is lined with fine dry grass and a little vegetable down, sometimes with a few feathers. Five or six eggs are laid, pale bluish green in ground-colour, and spotted with dark reddish brown and pinkish grey under-markings.

In autumn siskins unite in small flocks and migrate southward; and during winter they are found widely distributed over the country, but are most numerous in the northern counties of England. At this season they may be seen associating on trees and bushes with goldcrests, redpolls, and titmice of different species.

* * * * *

Closely allied to the siskin and goldfinch, and in its colouring intermediate between them, but differing in having the crown, nape, and chin black, is the serin (Serinus hortulanus). It breeds in North and Central Europe, and is only known in this country as a rare straggler.

Greenfinch.

Ligurinus chloris.

Yellowish green variegated with yellow and ash-grey. Length, six inches.

* * * * *

It has been a subject of mild wonder to me that the greenfinch is not more a favourite than I find him; for he is almost more with us than any other finch, and, in most cases, to know a bird well is to like it. Few of our eighteen finches can be seen and heard close to our houses. The brambling, siskin, redpoll, crossbill, and twite are scattered about the country in the cold and songless season; in summer we see little or nothing of them. The linnet is fairly abundant, but must be looked for on waste lands and commons; while the goldfinch, bullfinch, hawfinch, and tree-sparrow are either so shy or so rare that, to most persons, they might be non-existent. Three of our five buntings are common enough; but these, too, are birds of the open, that come little about houses, and are without the qualities that go to make a favourite. Of finches of the homestead that possess beauty and melody there are only two--the chaffinch and the greenfinch; and it is the fact that most people have a great esteem for the first, and pay but very slight attention to the second. The greenfinch is not formed on the graceful lines of the goldfinch and some other members of the family; he is made more after the pattern of the hawfinch, and is somewhat heavy in appearance. Regarding his colouring only, he is a prettier bird than his neighbour, the chaffinch, his plumage showing two colours that contrast beautifully--olive-green and brilliant yellow. It is not often that we can see him in the proper light and position. He is strangely fond of concealing himself in the green foliage, which makes him in his green dress invisible. Seen in the shade or against a bright light, his colour appears dull and indeterminate; but against a background of green leaves, with the sunlight on him, he is certainly beautiful.

The greenfinches are very sociable in disposition, and all the summer long, even when they are engaged in breeding, they may be seen in parties of three, or four, or half a dozen; two or three nests are often found on the same branch, or in close proximity. The passions of jealousy and anger, so common among birds in the pairing season, seem not to exist in this species. As a songster he cannot compare with the linnet, the chaffinch, and the goldfinch, but he probably produces more pleasant sound than any other finch, unless we include the chirruping of the sparrow. He is attached to gardens and shrubberies, to groves and hedges, and hedgerow trees, especially elms, and among the clustering leaves in which he loves to hide he is constantly uttering his various notes, the commonest of which is a low and long-drawn trill. Occasionally he gives out another long, single note, with a very different sound, a kind of soft-toned, inflected scream, used sometimes as a call-note and sometimes to express alarm; and this he will often repeat again and again at short intervals. When uttering his trill, which is his favourite expression, among the leaves, bird answering bird with trills that vary in tone, he gives out from time to time another sound, a series of warbled notes, soft and melodious in character. Occasionally, in the pairing season, the male bird flies up out of the cloud of foliage and emits these warbling notes as he circles round, and descends into the midst of the leaves again. The charm of this perpetual summer music of the greenfinches is its airy, subdued character, as of wind-touched leaves that flutter musically.

The nest is placed among the close branches of a bush or low tree, and is somewhat loosely put together, straw, roots, and moss, mixed with wool, being used, with a lining of fibres, horsehair, and feathers. The eggs are four to six in number, and are white, faintly spotted and speckled with purplish red at the large end. The young are fed on seeds of various weeds and small caterpillars; and two, and sometimes three, broods are reared in the season. At the end of summer the greenfinches repair to the fields, and are seen in flocks of two or three score to a hundred or more individuals, and are also found associating with sparrows, chaffinches, and other species.

The greenfinch is a common bird throughout the British Islands.

Hawfinch.