Part 49

The wryneck is placed by anatomists next to the woodpeckers, and is like them in the form of its feet and the habit of perching vertically on the trunks of trees; but he does not dig into the wood with his beak, nor does he support himself with his tail, the feathers of which are soft, as in most perching birds. He is a singular bird, differing from all others in form, colouring, language, and habits. His variously coloured plumage, so curiously and beautifully barred and mottled, is most like that of the nightjar; but his beauty appears only when he is seen very near. At a distance of twenty-five or thirty yards he is obscure in colouring, and is more remarkable for his attitudes and gestures, when seen on a tree trunk deftly and rapidly picking up the small ants on which he feeds. When thus engaged he twists his neck, turning his head from side to side in a most singular manner; hence the name of wryneck. When taken in the hand he twists his neck about in the same manner, and hisses like a snake, as he also does when disturbed during incubation; and on this account he has been called snake-bird. When held in the hand he sometimes swoons, and appears to be dead until released, whereupon he quickly recovers and makes his escape. Even more characteristic than his contortions, hissings, and ‘death feignings,’ is his voice. It is an unmistakable and familiar sound of early spring, as distinctive as the shrill cry of the swift and the cuckoo’s call--a clear, high-pitched, far-reaching note, reiterated many times--a sound that makes itself heard at a distance of a quarter of a mile. As a rule, this note is heard a few days before the cuckoo’s call, and on this account the wryneck is known in the southern counties, where he is most common, as the cuckoo’s mate, or messenger, or boder, and is also called the cuckoo’s maid.

The wryneck feeds chiefly on ants and their larvæ, and, like the green woodpecker, he goes to the anthills on commons and uncultivated grounds; the insects are taken with the long, retractile tongue, which is covered with an adhesive saliva, and which the bird, when feeding, darts out and withdraws with lightning rapidity.

A hole in the trunk of a tree, often near the roots, is a favourite nesting-place. The eggs are seven to ten in number, and are deposited, without any nest, on the rotten wood. They are pure white, and have glossy shells. The same breeding-hole is used year after year.

The wryneck is most common in the southern and south-eastern counties; in the West of England and in Wales it is rarer. In the northern counties of England it is also rare and local; in Scotland it does not breed, and in Ireland it is not known.

Kingfisher.

Alcedo ispida.

Back azure-blue; head and wing-coverts bluish green spotted with azure-blue; under and behind the eye a reddish band, passing into white, and beneath this a band of azure-green; wings and tail greenish blue; throat white; under parts rusty orange-red. Length, seven and a half inches.

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The kingfisher is by far the most brilliantly coloured bird in the British Islands; and those who see it living and moving with the sunlight on it can form an idea of the wonderful lustre of many tropical species, which certainly cannot be done by gazing on the labelled pellets of dead and dimmed feathers, called ‘specimens,’ in cabinets and museums. Unhappily, this rare splendour of the kingfisher, which gives it value, has served only to draw destruction upon it. As Yarrell long ago said, it is persecuted chiefly because of its beauty, and the desire to possess a stuffed specimen in a glass case. It is found in suitable localities throughout Great Britain where it has not been exterminated to gratify the vile taste that prefers a mummy to a living creature. In Ireland it is rare and local as a breeding species, but as an autumn and winter visitor is found throughout the country. It frequents streams and rivers, and the margins of lakes, and, more rarely, the seaside. It is a solitary bird, and, like the dipper, restricts itself to one part of the stream where it gets its food. Day after day it returns to the same perch, where it sits watching the surface, silent and immovable as a heron. It looks out for its prey both when perched and when flying at a height of a few feet above the surface, and often hovers motionless for a few moments before darting down into the water. With the minnow it captures held crossways in the beak it flies to a perch, and, after beating it against the branch or stone, swallows it, head first, sometimes tossing it in the air and catching it as it falls. It also preys on aquatic insects and small crustaceans. The pairing-time is early, and in February or March the birds make choice of a breeding place, usually near their fishing-ground, but sometimes at a distance of a mile or more from the water. A hole is dug in a bank to a depth of from one to three or four feet; but sometimes the birds find a hole suited to their purpose, or a cavity under the roots of a tree growing on an overhanging bank, which they occupy. The hole made by the birds has an upward slope, and ends in a chamber about six inches in diameter. Here is formed the nest, of the strangest material used by any nest-making bird. The kingfisher, like the owl and cuckoo and many other species, casts up the indigestible portions of its food--the minute bones of minnows in this case--in the form of small pellets. The pellets are thrown up in the nest-chamber, and, when broken up and pressed down by the sitting-bird, are shaped into a cuplike nest. The eggs are six to eight in number, pure white and translucent, and globular in form.

Probably the kingfisher pairs for life, as the same breeding-hole is used year after year, although the two birds are not seen together out of the breeding season.

The cry is a shrill but musical piping note, two or three times repeated, somewhat like the sandpiper’s cry.

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Two specimens of the belted kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon), an American species, have been obtained in Ireland.

Three other birds remain to be noticed in this place; they are members of three distinct families, and are amongst the most beautiful of the rare occasional visitors seen in our country:--

The roller (Coracius garrula), a jay-like bird, blue and chestnut-brown in colour. It breeds in Southern and Central Europe, and is known only as a rare straggler in the British Islands.

The bee-eater (Merops apiaster)--A good many examples of this elegant and richly coloured bird have been obtained in England. It is an abundant species in Southern Europe, where it breeds in colonies in sandbanks, like our sand-martin.

The hoopoe (Upupa epops).--This species has some claim to a place among British birds, as it is an annual visitor to our country, although in small numbers. It is a singular and beautiful bird, and it is sad to think that, but for the persecution it has encountered year after year, it would most probably have established itself as a regular breeding species in the southern counties of England.

Cuckoo.

Cuculus canorus.

Upper parts bluish ash, darker on the wings, lighter on the neck and breast; under parts whitish with transverse dusky streaks; quills barred on the inner webs with oval white spots; tail-feathers blackish, tipped and spotted with white; beak dusky, edged with yellow; orbits and inside of mouth orange yellow; iris and feet yellow. Young: ash-brown barred with reddish brown; tips of feathers white; a white spot on the back of the head. Length, thirteen and a half inches.

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There are many cuckoos in the world, and in some countries it would be possible to see three or four, or even half a dozen, distinct species in the course of a single day. We have but one, and have made much of it. ‘Perhaps no bird,’ says Yarrell, ‘has attracted so much attention, while of none have more idle tales been told.’ And he might have added, that of no other bird so much remains to be known. Our cuckoo interests us in two distinct ways: he charms us, and he affects the mind with his strangeness. He is a visitor of the early spring, with a far-reaching, yet soft and musical, voice, full of beautiful associations, prophetic of the flowery season. To quote Sir Philip Sidney’s words, applying them to a feathered instead of to a human troubadour: ‘He cometh to you with a tale to hold children from their play and old men from the chimney-corner.’ Seen, this melodist has the bold figure, rough, feathered legs, and barred plumage of a hawk. This fierce, predacious aspect is deceptive: he is a timid bird, with the climbing feet of the woodpecker and wryneck. Strangest of all, the female has the habit of placing her eggs in other birds’ nests, forgetting her motherhood, a proceeding which, being contrary to nature’s use, seems unnatural. It reads like a tale from the ‘Thousand and One Nights,’ in which we sometimes encounter human beings, good, or bad, or merely fantastic, who wander about the world disguised as birds. Only when we see and handle the cuckoo’s egg placed in the hedge-sparrow’s, or pipit’s, or wagtail’s nest, when we see the large hawk-like young cuckoo being fed and tenderly cared for by its diminutive foster-parent, do we realise the extraordinary nature of such an instinct. In spite of this ‘naughtiness’ of the cuckoo, to speak of it in human terms, it is to all a favourite, ‘the darling of the year,’ and from the days when the oldest known English lyric was written--

Summer is icumen in, Loud sing cuckoo,

to the present time the poets have found inspiration in his fluting call; and musicians, too, owing to that unique quality of his voice which makes it imitable and harmonious with human music, vocal and instrumental.

The cuckoo does not usually arrive in this country before the middle of April, but he is sometimes two, and even three weeks earlier. The males arrive first, and it is they that utter the well-known double call that gives the bird its name. The cry of the female, a curious prolonged bubbling sound, is heard less frequently.

One of the strangest facts in the strange history of this bird is that its egg is not laid in the nest in which it is found, but is carried by the cuckoo in her bill and placed there. It is very small for so large a bird, although much larger, in most cases, than the eggs it is placed with, as its favourite nests in this country are all of small birds--the hedge-sparrow, reed-warbler, pied wagtail, and meadow-pipit. The eggs are very variable, being dull greenish or dull reddish grey, with spots and mottlings of a deeper shade. In some instances the cuckoo’s egg resembles in colour the eggs it is placed with, and it is thought by some naturalists that the female cuckoo invariably deposits her eggs in the nests of one species. As a rule, only one egg is laid in a nest, and a few days after the eggs are hatched the young cuckoo gets rid of his foster-brothers by getting them on to his back, which is broad and hollow, and throwing them over the side of the nest. If any unhatched eggs remain in the nest, he gets rid of them in the same way.

The food of the cuckoo is exclusively insectivorous, and consists in large part of hairy caterpillars, which most birds refuse to touch. The indigestible portions of the food he swallows are cast up in small pellets.

By August the old birds take their departure; the young migrate one to two months later.