Part 14

The length from the bill to the tail is 10 inches, to the end of the toes, 11 3/4 inches; breadth, 17 inches; thigh-joint to the toe, 5 1/2 inches. The bill measures 1 5/8 inches from the corner of the mouth, and is very slender; the upper mandible, which is black and slightly curved at the point, is a little longer than the lower one, which is a dark green at the base and black at the point; a dark streak extends from the base of the upper mandible to the corner of the eye, and above it is a patch of dirty white intermixed with minute dusky spots; a small circle of dirty white surrounds the eyes; the chin is white; the cheeks, throat, and forepart of the neck white, spotted with dusky, with which colour a few laminae of each feather are marked their whole length. The breast has a dappled stripe of the same colour as the throat running down the middle of it; with this exception it is white, as are also the belly, vent, and under tail-coverts. The crown of the head and hinder part of the neck are a dingy brown, which on the neck has a shade of ash colour; the bend of the wing and lesser wing-coverts are a brownish black; the whole upper surface of the plumage is of a glossy brownish-green, which is spotted on the middle wing-coverts with minute white spots, that change to a dingy yellow on the back, scapulars, and tertials, the last of which have twelve spots on the outer margin of the feathers, and six on the inner one; the tertials are very long, the longest of them reaching to within a quarter of an inch of the extreme top of the wing, which reaches to the end of the tail; the quill feathers are wholly black, as are also the secondaries; the upper part of the rump is black, and each feather is slightly tipped with white, which forms small wavy lines on that part of the plumage; the lower part of the rump and upper tail-coverts are pure white; the tail, which is even at the end, consists of twelve feathers, which are barred with black and white alternately.

At the end of Bewick's description of the Green Sandpiper there is a very exact representation of a covert feather of the tail, and an inner-wing covert, which will give a better idea of their appearance than a page of letterpress. The legs are dark green, the outer toe connected with the middle one by a membrane as far as the first joint; toes very slender, middle one 1 1/4 inch long; weight, 2 3/4 oz. Killed on the 17th September, 1831, near Stonyhurst.

I have been thus minute in my description from a wish to clear up the doubt that appears to exist as to the identity of these two birds. The one I have now before me is, undoubtedly, the Green Sandpiper of Bewick, but it corresponds in so many particulars with the Wood Sandpiper of Montagu, and appears to combine so many of the peculiarities of both without exactly agreeing with either, that I think it proves their identity satisfactorily. The glossy green of the upper plumage and the barring of the under wing- coverts and the tail identify this bird with the Green Sandpiper; whilst on the other side the yellowish spots on the scapulars and tertials, the black rump, the length of the leg, and the web between the outer and middle toes are characteristic of the Wood Sandpiper of Montagu.

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THE STOAT.

I. M. (in the "Magazine of Natural History") says that the Stoat is more timid than the weasel, and that it does not change its colour as in the more northern parts of the world. I know not why he calls it timid, even relatively, as I think it is the most fearless wild animal we have in the kingdom, in proof of which I will mention an incident I witnessed myself. I one day saw a Stoat carrying off a large rat it had killed, and I immediately pursued it, but it stuck so tenaciously to its prey (although it was so encumbered with its load as to be scarcely able to run at all) that I was close upon it before it would abandon it; however, it then took refuge in a wall that happened to be close by. I took up the rat, and the Stoat put its head out of the wall, spitting and chattering with every appearance of the most lively indignation against me for having so unjustly robbed it of a lawful prize. I amused myself with watching it for some time, and then being desirous of seeing how far its evident desire to recapture its booty would overcome its fear of me, I held the rat just before the hole in which it was, when after several attempts, in which its discretion got the better of its valour, it at length screwed up its courage to the sticking-place, came boldly out of the wall, and dragged it out of my hand into the hole.

I know not in what county I. M. lives, nor do I know whether he means to include any part of England in the more northern parts of the world, but I do know that the Stoat is white in the winter in Yorkshire, as I have caught and still more frequently seen specimens of this colour.

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THE MARSH TITMOUSE.

I have been much interested this spring at witnessing in two or three instances the tenacity with which the Marsh Titmouse sits on its nest. Being in a wood near my own house, I perceived a pair of these birds in one of the trees, and having seen them in the same place several times before, and being desirous of finding the nest, I sat down to watch their motions. After examining me on all sides with much chattering and many gesticulations, indicative of dislike and suspicion, the female flew to the root of a tree, three or four yards off, and disappeared, as she had gone to the opposite side of the tree to that on which I sat; and as there were several holes about the root I was at a loss to know in which the nest was built, and began to strike the root with a stick, expecting her to fly out, but nothing appeared. I then examined the holes one by one, and whilst doing so heard her hissing and puffing from within, in such a way that if I had not known she was there I should have thought it was a snake rather than a bird. However, as she would not come out, and the hole was so small that I could not get my hand in, I was obliged to raise the siege until next morning, when I returned armed with a hammer and chisel with which to storm her citadel. As the wood was sound, the hole small, and the nest six or eight inches within the tree, I was five or ten minutes before I could get to it, during which I gave her repeated opportunities of escaping if she chose; but she still sat on her nest, puffing and pecking at the stick that I thrust in in order to drive her off. She at last crept to the further edge of the nest, which I then took out, as I wanted it for one of my friends who is a collector of eggs, but on attempting to blow one I found they had been sat upon too long, and I then felt desirous of seeing whether the old bird would hatch them after having her nest torn from under her, and I turned back to the tree whence I had taken them, and found her still sitting in the hole where I had left her. I regret to add that the humane part of my experiment did not succeed, for although she remained after I had returned the nest to its place, she left it immediately after, and did not return to it again.

Another instance which I witnessed was in a nest containing young ones. This was also at the root of a tree, but the situation did not appear to be so well chosen as is usually the case with the Titmouse tribe; for in this instance the hole went quite through the tree, and on one side was large enough to admit the hand. As the young ones were exposed to the weather, and were also liable to be seen by anyone going along the adjoining footpath, I attempted to remedy this defect by covering the larger hole with a sod, which to a casual observer would appear to have grown there. On taking the sod off one day, to see how the nestlings were going on, I perceived that a clod of earth had fallen from the sod upon them, and I took a stick and hooked it out, lest it should smother them. Whilst I was doing this I perceived the old one sat on the further side of the nest, so still and quiet that until I perceived her eye I fancied she was dead; and she also endured several pokings with the stick before she would move, although the hole on the opposite side of the tree enabled her to escape whenever she thought proper.

Perhaps Mr. Rennie, in his next edition of Montagu's Dictionary, will give us a new name for this bird, as the one it has at present is no more applicable to this species than it is to the Parus caeruleus, or the Parus major, and not half so much so as it would be to the Parus biarnicus; and he has changed good names into bad ones with far less reason, witness Corvus frugilegus into Corvus predatorius. The former name is strictly applicable to that species, and to that alone; and so useful a bird does not deserve the name of a thief. The Chaffinch (which received its name of Coelebs from Linnaeus on account of the males alone remaining in Sweden in the winter, which fact is corroborated by White, who found scarcely any but females in Hampshire during that season) has had its name changed by Mr. Rennie into Spiza. The old name is characteristic of a remarkable fact in the habits of this bird; why the new one is more appropriate (neither understanding Greek, nor having read Aristotle), I cannot say. Will Mr. Rennie condescend to enlighten me?

Once for all--if we are to have a new nomenclature, let a committee of able naturalists decide upon it, or let us submit to the authority of a master (for instance Linnaeus or Temminck), but don't let every bookmaker who publishes a work on Natural History, rejecting names long established and universally received, give new ones in such a way as serves only to show his own presumption and to confuse what it ought to be his business to elucidate.

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CREEPER.

The Nuthatch does not occur in this, and I doubt if in any part of Lancashire, but the Creeper is very common, and is a bird with the habits and peculiar call of which I have been acquainted from my childhood. Mr. Bree, who combines with accurate and extensive information, an amiable and pleasant manner of communicating it, has not, I perceive, witnessed the Creepers associating with the Titmice in winter, at which I am rather surprised, and think if they are numerous in his neighbourhood, he will hereafter not fail to perceive them among the small flocks of Titmice which associate through the winter.

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WRENS' NESTS.

In Mr. Rennie's edition of Montagu's Dictionary, and also in his "Architecture of Birds," after copying what I have said on the subject of Wrens' nests being lined with feathers, he says:-- "There can be no doubt, I apprehend, of these supposed cock-nests being nothing more than the unfinished structures of paired birds; otherwise the story would require the support of strong evidence to render it credible." Mr. Rennie afterwards goes on to say that in two instances he had seen nests which had about half-a-dozen feathers interwoven into the linings with hair; and Mr. Jennings, if I recollect aright, as I have not the work to refer to at present, says that Wrens don't line their nests with anything but moss, and he thinks Montagu is in error when he says they are lined with feathers. Along with this I send you three or four Wrens' nests, which you will perceive have abundance of feathers in the inside; and although the Wren will occasionally use cows' hair along with the feathers, yet I am persuaded from the localities in which I have met with them, that cows' hair has been used because feathers were not to be found; but when the nests are in the vicinity of a rookery, a farm-yard, or any other locality where feathers are abundant, the Wrens will use them exclusively. What the "strong evidence" must be which will convince Mr. Rennie about cock-nests, I don't know; but I know of a dozen of these nests at the present moment, several of which have remained in the state in which they were left in the middle of April. Other nests found about the same time have now young ones in them. I doubt not these nests are occasionally used for breeding in: for instance, if the first nest of a Wren be taken, or if it breed a second time, it will occasionally take possession of a cock-nest; as I have sometimes found that after remaining in the same unfinished state for several weeks, they have afterwards been fitted up with a lining, and bred in.

Mr. Rennie asserts that Montagu is wrong when he says that the Wren always adapts its materials to its locality. Although it certainly is not always the case, yet so very generally is it so, that I think it is not surprising that Montagu made this assertion.

Thus, if a Wren build in a haystack, the front of the nest is generally composed of the hay from the stack; if it be built in a bush by the side of a river, and (which is frequently the case) below flood mark, it is generally covered on the outside with the rubbish which has been left there by the flood; and if it build in a mossy stump, the front of the nest is composed of the dark- coloured moss which grows there. (May 22, 1832.)

Along with my last letter, I sent some Wrens' nests lined with feathers, and I could easily have increased them to a dozen of the same sort, only I did not wish to deprive so many of my little favourites of their eggs and young. Every day convinces me more decidedly, that I am right both with regard to the lining of the Wrens' nests, and as to the cock-nests also. The nests I sent you will prove the former, and I know of at least twenty instances of the latter, in nests which I have known of all through the spring, from April to the present time, which have remained in the same unfinished state, although they are not forsaken, as I have found the birds in them, in several instances, when I have examined them. I found one of these nests on the 10th of April, under a bank on the side of the river; and I examined it repeatedly through April and May, and always found it in the same state, although there was always a pair of Wrens about, and I could find no other nest; yet I am sure there was another, for in the beginning of this month (June) there were some young Wrens, which had evidently only just come out of the nest; and there were only two or three bushes grew thereabouts, so that it is not probable they had come from any other quarter, but the bushes were filled with dead leaves, and other rubbish brought down by the flood. However, when I heard them, I looked out for another nest, as I believe (notwithstanding what Montagu says, that there are few birds, if any, that would produce a second lot of eggs if the first were unmolested) that most of the small birds which are early breeders build a second time the same year, even when they succeed in rearing the first brood. I have had proof of this (if anything can be considered proof, except marking the birds), in the Throstle, the Blackbird, the Wren, the Redbreast, and the Hedge Sparrow, whose second nests may be found contiguous to the first; and in point of time, this always happens just when the first brood have left the nest. The cock-bird, too, who had been silent whilst his young were unfledged, begins to sing again, and throwing off the anxious and care-beset manners of a parent, again assumes that of a bridegroom. But to return to Wrens' nests. I found one within ten yards of the one I had known of since the 10th of April, lined, and ready for an egg. As I was anxious to prove what I had so long believed, I pulled out this nest, thinking that the old bird was ready for laying a second lot of eggs; and that when I had destroyed this, as she had no other nest ready, she would probably take up with the cock-nest.

As it was half a mile from my house, I did not visit it again until the 16th of June, and was then delighted to find the old bird sitting on six or seven eggs in the cock-nest, which had remained so long unoccupied. I believe that in this instance there is very little lining (fur, feathers, &c.) in the nest, although I should be sorry to examine it minutely until the young have left it; but I consider it an exception to the general rule, inasmuch as I believe the bird was ready to lay when I pulled out the other nest. As she would have to find another with as little delay as possible, she would not have time to embellish the inside in the same manner as she probably would have done if she had had more time.

On examining another Wrens' nest a few evenings ago, I found the young ones had flown, and as there was a cock-nest in some wrack left by the river in a bush a few yards off, I gave it a shake to see if the old ones had taken possession of it for another brood; and I was surprised to see one, and then a second young one come flying out, and a third putting out its head to reconnoitre. Whether the whole brood was there I don't know, as I did not disturb them further. As I had examined this nest only ten days before, when it had not an egg in it, I was at first at a loss to account for these young ones; but I have now no doubt they were the young from the adjoining nest, which had taken up their quarters for the night in the new house. But how had they learnt the way? Young birds generally roost where night finds them, and if I had found only one, I should not have been surprised, but to find at least three, probably six or seven, in a nest where I am certain they were not bred, was something new to me. I went several times in the evening after this, but never found them; I suppose the fright I gave them deterred them from lodging there again.

The editor of "Loudon's Magazine," in a paragraph appended to this article, says: "We have examined the Wrens' nests sent; their staple materials are moss, feathers, and hair. Into the moss on the exterior of the nest are woven a more or less perfect but feeble frond or two, and separate pinnae as well of Aspidium Filix-Mas, and leaves of apple, elm, and oak trees. Interiorly cows' hair is not scarce, and is partly inwoven with the moss and laces it together, and partly mingled with the feathers; a horse- hair or two are also observable. The feathers in each nest, apparently those of domestic fowls, are numerous enough to fill the hollow of the hand when the fingers are so folded over as not to much compress the feathers."

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ALARM-NOTE OF ONE BIRD UNDERSTOOD BY OTHER SPECIES OF BIRDS.

In Montagu's "Ornithological Dictionary," under the article "Song of Birds," there is the following remark: "Regarding the note of alarm which birds utter on the approach of their natural enemies, whether a Hawk, an Owl, or a Cat, we consider it to be a general language perfectly understood by all small birds, though each species has a note peculiar to itself." I was last April very much pleased at witnessing an illustration of the truth of this opinion. I found a nest of young Throstles at the root of a hazel, and although they could scarcely fly, yet as they were near a footpath, and the next day was Sunday, when many idle and mischievous lads would be rambling about, I thought they would be safer out of their nest than in it; and as I knew that when so far fledged, if they were once disturbed they would not continue in the nest, I took one from the nest and made it cry out, and then put it back again; but in one minute, not only it but its three companions had disappeared in the long dry grass which was round about. On hearing the cry of their young one, the parent bird set up such shrieks of alarm as brought all the birds in the wood to see what was the matter. I noticed the Blackbird, the Chaffinch, the Titlark, the Robin, the Oxeye (greater Titmouse), the Blue and Marsh Titmouse, and the Wren all uttering their cries of alarm and apprehension; even the golden-crested Wren, which usually seems to care for nothing, was as forward and persevering as any of them in expressing its fears on this occasion; indeed, the only bird which seemed indifferent to all these manifestations of alarm was the Creeper, which continued its anxious and incessant search for food, as it flitted from one tree to another, examining them from root to branch without ever seeming to understand or to care for what seemed to have so much frightened the others. (June 30th, 1832.)