Part 41

Until near the breeding-time, the sea-eagle lives at peace with his fellows; but, as that season approaches, he becomes combative and quarrelsome, in most cases through jealousy. For the sake of mate and eyrie, he wages bitter war with others of his species. An eagle pair, once united, remain so for life, but only if the male is able to protect his mate from the wooing of others, and to defend his own eyrie. A male eagle, which has just reached maturity and is exulting in the consciousness of his strength, casts his eyes longingly upon the mate and eyrie of another eagle, and both are lost to their owner if he allows himself to be vanquished in fight by the intruder. The rightful lord, therefore, fights to the death against everyone who attempts to disturb his marital and domestic happiness. The battle begins high in the air, but is often finished on the ground. With beak and claw, first one, then the other ventures an assault; at length one succeeds in getting a grip of his adversary, whose talons, in return, are promptly fixed in his rival’s body. Like balls of feathers, the two fall to the ground, or into the water, when both let go their hold, but only to renew the attack. When they fight on the ground, the rivals challenge one another like enraged cocks, and blood and feathers left behind show the scene of the battle and bear witness to its deadly seriousness. The female circles above the combatants or watches them from her high perch with seeming indifference, but she never fails to caress the conqueror, whether he be her lawful spouse or the new-comer. Woe to the eagle if he does not succeed in repulsing the intruder! In the eyes of the female, none but the strong deserves the fair.

After successfully repelled attacks and fights of that kind, from which no eagle is exempt, and which are said to be repeated in Hungary every year, the pair, probably long wedded, take possession of the old eyrie, and begin, in February, to repair it. Both birds set to work to collect the necessary material, picking it up from the ground, or from the water, or breaking it off the trees, and carrying it in their talons, often for a long distance, to the nest, to rebuild and improve this as well as an eagle can. As this building up of the old nest takes place every year, it gradually grows to a considerable height, and one can tell from it the age of the birds, and may also guess the probable duration of their wedded life; for the oldest nest contains the oldest pair of eagles. The nest is not always placed among the highest branches of the tree, but is in all cases high above the ground, more or less near the trunk, and always on strong boughs which can bear its heavy and ever-increasing weight. Both upper and lower tiers consist of sticks and twigs laid loosely above and across one another; and many pairs of hedge-sparrows, which approach the mighty birds quite boldly and confidently, find among these twigs cavities suitable for nesting or hiding.

Towards the end of February, or in the beginning of March, the female lays two, or at most three eggs in the shallow nest-cavity, and begins brooding assiduously. The male meantime supplies her with food, not, however, making longer expeditions in search of it than are absolutely necessary, but spending whatever time he can spare from the work of providing for her and himself, sitting, a faithful and attentive guardian, on a tree in the neighbourhood, which serves him at once as perch and sleeping-place. After about four weeks of brooding, the young emerge from the eggs, looking at first like soft balls of wool, from which dark eyes peer forth, and a dark bill and very sharp claws protrude. Even in their earliest youth the little creatures are as pretty as they are self-possessed. Now there is work enough for both father and mother. The two take turns in going forth to seek for prey, and in mounting guard over the little ones; but it is the mother who tends them. The father honestly performs his part in the rearing of the brood; but the mother alone is capable of giving them that care and attention which may be described as nursing. If she were torn from them in the first days of their life, they would perish as surely as young mammals robbed of their suckling mother. With her own breast the eagle-mother protects them from frost and snow; from her own crop she supplies them with warmed, softened, and partly-digested food. The eagle-father does not render such nursing services as these, but if the mother perish when the young are half-grown, he unhesitatingly takes upon himself the task of rearing and feeding them, and often performs it with the most self-sacrificing toil. The young eagles grow rapidly. In the third week of their existence the upper surface of the body is covered with feathers; towards the end of May they are full-grown and fully fledged. Then they leave the nest, to prepare, under the guidance of their parents, for the business of life.

This is a picture, drawn with hasty strokes, of the life of the eagle, which, for the next few days, was the object of our expeditions. No fewer than nineteen inhabited eyries were visited by us with varying success. Now on foot, now in little boats, now jumping and wading, now creeping and gliding, we endeavoured, unseen and unheard, to approach the trees bearing the nests; for hours we crouched expectantly beneath them in huts hastily built with branches, gazing eagerly up at the eagles, which, startled by us or others, were wheeling and circling high in the air, and showing no inclination to return to their nests, but which we knew must return sometime, and would probably fall victims to us. We were able to observe them very accurately and fully, and this eagle-hunt gained, therefore, an indescribable charm for us all.

Except for the eagles and other birds of prey which we secured, the forests, which looked so promising, proved, or at any rate seemed, to be poor in feathered inhabitants. Of course it was early in the year, and the stream of migration was still in full flood; nor did we succeed in investigating more than the outskirts of the forest. But even the number of birds which had returned and taken up their quarters on the outskirts of the forest did not come up to our expectations. And yet this apparent poverty disappointed me less than the lack of good songsters. The song-thrush did indeed pour forth its rich music through the woods fragrant with the breath of spring; here and there a nightingale sang; the finch warbled its spring greeting everywhere; and even a white-throat tried its notes, but none of these satisfied our critical ear. All who sang or warbled seemed merely bunglers, not masters. And at last we began to feel that real song did not belong to those dark woods at all, that the cries of eagles and falcons, the hooting of horned owls and screech-owls, the croaking of water-hens and terns, the shrill cry of herons and the laughter of woodpeckers, the cuckoos’ call and the cooing of stock-doves were the music best befitting them, and that, besides these, the only bird that had a right to sing was the sedge-warbler, who lived among the reeds and bulrushes, and who had borrowed most of his intricate song from the frogs.

On the fourth day we hunted in the Keskender forest, a few miles from the banks of the Danube. As we left the forests on the river banks, we had to traverse a great plain bounded in the far distance by a chain of hills. Our route lay through well-cultivated fields belonging to the large estate of Bellye--a model of good management--and we made rapid progress on swift horses. Here and there marshy meadows, with pools and ditches, a little thicket, large farm-buildings surrounded by gnarled oaks, a hamlet, a village, but for the most part treeless fields; this was the character of the district through which we hastened. Larks innumerable rose singing from the fields; dainty water-wagtails tripped about the roads; shrikes and corn-buntings sat on every wayside hedge; brooding jackdaws and starlings bustled and clamoured about their nests in the crowns of the oaks; above the ponds ospreys were wheeling on the outlook for fish, and graceful terns skimmed along in zigzag flight; the lapwing busied itself in the marshes. Apart from these, we observed very few birds. Even the Keskender wood, a well-kept forest, which we reached after two hours’ riding, was poor in species, notwithstanding its varied character. There, however, were the nests of spotted-eagles and ospreys, short-toed eagles and common buzzards, falcons, owls, and, above all, black storks in surprising numbers, and our expedition was therefore successful beyond all expectation. And yet the foresters, who, in anticipation of the Crown Prince’s visit, had, only a few days before, searched the woods and noted the position of the various eyries on a hastily constructed map, did not know of nearly all the birds of prey and black storks nesting in the forest. “It is like Paradise here,” remarked the Crown Prince Rudolf, and these words accurately described the relations between men and animals in Hungary. Like the Oriental, the Hungarian is happily not possessed by the mania for killing which has caused the extreme shyness of the animals, and the painfully evident poverty of animal life in Western Europe; he does not grudge a home even to the bird of prey which settles on his land, and he does not make constant and cruel raids on the animal world, which lives and moves about him. Not even the low self-interest which at present prompts covetous feather-dealers to make yearly expeditions to the marshes of the lower Danube, and which sacrifices hundreds of thousands of happy and interesting bird-lives for the sake of their feathers, has had power to move the Magyar from his good old customs. It may be that indifference to the animal life around him has something to do with his hospitality; but the hospitality is there, and it has not yet given place to a thirst for persecution. Animals, and especially birds, remain quite confidently in the neighbourhood of men; they go about their own affairs quite unconcerned as to what men may be doing. The eagle has his eyrie by the roadside, the raven nests among the trees in the field, the black or wood stork is hardly more shy than the sacred house-stork; the deer does not rise from his lair when a carriage passes within rifle-range. Verily, it is like Paradise.

But we found a state of paradise elsewhere than in the Keskender forest. After we had roamed through the forest in many directions, and had visited more than twenty eyries of buzzards and ospreys and black storks, and had refreshed and strengthened ourselves with an excellent breakfast provided for us, and still more with the delicious wine of the district, we set out on our return journey to the ship, urged to haste by threatening thunder-clouds, but still hunting and collecting as time and opportunity allowed. Our route was different from that which we had followed in coming to the forest; it was a good high-road connecting a number of villages. We passed through several of those, and again the road led us between houses. There was nothing remarkable about the buildings, but the people were stranger than my fancy could have pictured. The population of Dalyok consists almost solely of Schokazen or Catholic Servians, who migrated from the Balkan Peninsula, or were brought thither by the Turks, during the period of the Turkish supremacy. They are handsome, slender people these Schokazen, the men tall and strong, the women at least equal to the men, extremely well built and apparently rather pretty. We could form a definite opinion with regard to their figures, but, as far as their faces were concerned, we had to depend to some extent on our own imagination. For the Schokaz women wear a style of dress which will hardly be found elsewhere within the boundaries of Europe at the present day: a dress which our princely patron, happy as usual in his descriptions, called mythological. When I say that head and face were almost entirely enveloped in quaintly yet not unpicturesquely wound and knotted cloths, and that the skirt was replaced by two gaily-coloured apron-like pieces of cloth, not connected with each other, I may leave the rest to the most lively imagination without fearing that it will be likely to exceed the actual state of things. For my own part I was reminded of a camp of Arab nomad herdsmen which I had once seen in the primitive forests of Central Africa.

At dusk, under pouring rain, we reached our comfortable vessel. Rain fell the following morning also, the whole day was gloomy, and our expedition was proportionately disappointing. All this impelled us to continue our journey, though we look back gratefully on those pleasant days on the Bellye estate, and though it would have been well worth while to have observed and collected there a few days longer. With warm and well-earned words of praise the Crown Prince bade farewell to the officials on the archducal estate; one glance more at the woods which had offered us so much, and our swift little vessel steams down the Danube again. After a few hours we reach Draueck, the mouth of the river Drau, which thenceforward seems to determine the direction of the Danube bed. One of the grandest river pictures I have ever seen presented itself to our gaze. A vast sheet of water spread out before us; towards the south it is bounded by smiling hills, on all the other sides by forests, such as we had already seen. Neither the course of the main stream nor the bed of its tributary could be made out; the whole enormous sheet of water was like an inclosed lake whose banks were only visible at the chain of hills above mentioned; for through the green vistas of the forest one saw more water, thickets, and reed-beds, these last covering the great marsh of Hullo, which stretches out in apparently endless extent. Giant tree-trunks, carried down by both streams, and only partly submerged, assumed the most fantastic shapes; it seemed as if fabled creatures of the primitive world reared their scaly bodies above the dark flood. For the “blonde” Danube looked dark, almost black, as we sped through the Draueck. Grayish-black and dark-blue thunder-clouds hung in the heavens, apparently also amidst the hundred-toned green of the forests, and over the unvarying faded yellow of the reed-beds; flashes of lightning illumined the whole picture vividly; the rain splashed down; the thunder rolled; the wind howled through the tops of the tall old trees, lashed up the surface of the water, and crowned the dark crests of the waves with gray-white foam; but away in the south-east the sun had broken through the dark clouds, edged them with purple and gold, illumined them so that the black shadows grew yet blacker, and shone brightly down on the smiling hills, which lead up to a mountain range far away on the horizon. Below and beyond us lay hamlets and villages, but, where we were, at most a cone-shaped, reed-covered fisher-hut broke the primeval character of the magnificent scene, which, in its wildness and in the weird effect of the momentary flashes of light, was sublime beyond description.

The scarcity of birds was striking, as indeed was the desolateness of the whole sheet of water. Not a gull floated over the mirror of the Danube, not a tern winged its zigzag flight up and down; at most a few drakes rose from the river. Now and then a common heron, a flight of night-herons, an erne, and a few kites, hooded crows and ravens, perhaps also a flock of lapwings, and the list of birds which one usually sees is exhausted.

From the following day onwards we hunted and explored a wonderful district. The blue mountains, upon which lay bright, golden sunlight during the thunder-storm of the previous day, are the heights of Fruskagora, a wooded hill range of the most delightful kind. Count Rudolf Chotek had prepared everything for the fitting reception of our Prince, and thus we enjoyed several days which can never be forgotten. From the village of Čerewič, on the upper side of which our vessel lay, we drove daily through the gorges, climbed the heights on foot or on horseback, to return homewards each evening delighted and invigorated. The golden May-tide refreshed heart and soul, and our host’s untiring attention, complaisance, courtesy, and kindness went far to make the days passed at Fruskagora the pleasantest and most valuable part of our whole journey.

It was a charming district, about which we roamed every day. Around the village was a range of fields; beyond these a girdle of vineyards which reach to the very edge of the forest; in the valleys and gorges between them the innumerable fruit trees were laden with fragrant blossom, which brightened the whole landscape; on the banks, beside the road which usually led through the valleys, there was a dense growth of bushes, and the refreshing charm of the wealth of blossom was enhanced by the murmuring brooks and trickling runlets of water. From the first heights we reached the view was surprisingly beautiful. In the foreground lay the picturesque village of Čerewič; then the broad Danube, with its meadow-forests on the opposite shore; behind these stretched the boundless Hungarian plain, exhibiting to the spectator its fields and meadows, woods and marshes, villages and market towns in an unsteady, changeful light, which gave them a peculiar charm; in the east lay the stronghold of Peterwardein. Larks rose singing from the fields; the nightingale poured forth its tuneful lay from the bushes; the cheery song of the rock-thrush rang down from the vineyards; and two species of vulture and three kinds of eagle were describing great circles high in the air.

When we had gone a little farther we lost sight of river, villages, and fields, and entered one of the secluded forest-valleys. The sides of the mountain rise precipitously from it, and, like the ridges and slopes, they are densely wooded, though the trees are not very tall. Oaks and limes, elms and maples predominate in some places, copper-beeches and hornbeams in others; thick, low bushes, which shelter many a pair of nightingales, are scattered about the outskirts of the forest. No magnificent far-reaching views reward the traveller who climbs to the highest ridge to see Hungary lying to the north, and Servia to the south; but the mysterious darkness of the forest soothes soul and sense. From the main ridge, which is at most 3000 feet in height, many chains branch off on either side almost at right angles, and have a fine effect from whatever side one looks at them. Among them are valleys or enclosed basins whose steep walls make transport of felled wood impossible, and which therefore display all the natural luxuriance of forest growth. Gigantic beeches, with straight trunks smooth up to the spreading crown, rise from amid mouldering leaves in which the huntsman sinks to the knee; gnarled oaks raise their rugged heads into the air as if to invite the birds of prey to nest there; dome-like limes form such a close roof of leaves, that only a much-broken reflection of the sun’s rays trembles on the ground. In addition to the nightingale, which is everywhere abundant, the songsters of this forest are the song-thrush and blackbird, golden oriole and red-breast, chaffinch and wood-wren; the cuckoo calls its spring greeting from hill to hill; black and green woodpeckers, nut-hatches and titmice, ring-doves and stock-doves may be heard in all directions.

We had come here chiefly to hunt the largest European bird of prey, the black vulture, Fruskagora being apparently the northern boundary of its breeding region. The other large European vulture had recently appeared in the district, probably attracted by the unfortunate victims of the Servian war, and both species brooded here protected by the lord of the estate, who was an enthusiastic naturalist. I was already acquainted with both these species of vulture, for I had seen them on former journeys, but it was a great pleasure to me to observe them in their brooding-place, and hear the reports of my fellow-sportsmen and of Count Chotek; for on this expedition also our main desire was to increase our knowledge of animal life. Here again we were able to make a long series of observations, and many aspects of the life of both these giant birds, which had hitherto been obscure to us all, were cleared up and explained by our investigations.

The crested black vulture, whose range of distribution is not confined to the three southern peninsulas of Europe, but extends also through West and Central Asia, to India and China, is resident in Fruskagora, but after the brooding season he frequently makes long expeditions, which bring him regularly to Northern Hungary, and frequently to Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. His powerful wings enable him to undertake such expeditions without the slightest difficulty. Unfettered by eggs or helpless young, he flies early in the morning from the tree on which he has passed the night, ascends spirally to a height to which the human eye unaided cannot follow him, then with his incomparably keen, mobile eye, whose focal distance can be rapidly altered, he scans the horizon, detects unfailingly even small carrion, and alights to devour and digest it, or to store it in his crop. After feeding he returns to his accustomed place, or continues his pathless journeying. Not only does he carefully scan the land lying beneath him, perhaps for many square miles, but he keeps watch on the movements of others of his species, or of any large carrion-eating birds, that he may profit by their discoveries. Thus only can we explain the sudden and simultaneous appearance of several, or even many vultures beside a large carcass, even in a region not usually inhabited by these birds. They are guided in their search for prey, not by their sense of smell, which is dull, but by sight. One flies after another when he sees that he has discovered carrion, and his swiftness of flight is so great that he can usually be in time to share the feast, if he sees the finder circling above his booty. Certainly he must lose no time, for it is not for nothing that he and his kin are called “geier”; their greed beggars description. Within a few minutes three or four vultures will stow away the carcass of a sheep or a dog in their crops, leaving only the most trifling remains; the meal-time therefore passes with incredible rapidity, and whoever arrives late on the scene is doomed to disappointment.

The country round Fruskagora yields a good deal more to the vultures than an occasional feast of carrion, for in the stomachs of those which we shot and dissected we found remains of souslik and large lizards, which are scarcely likely to have been found dead, but were more probably seized and killed.

On account of the northerly situation of Fruskagora, and the well-ordered state of the surrounding country, which is not very favourable to vultures, the black vultures were still brooding during our visit, though others of the same species, whose haunts were farther south, must undoubtedly have had young birds by that time. The eyries were placed in the tallest trees, and most of them on the uppermost third of the mountain side. Many were quite well known to Count Chotek and his game-keepers, for they had been occupied as a brooding-place by a pair of vultures, possibly the same pair, for at least twenty years, and as they had been added to each year they had assumed very considerable proportions. Others seemed of more recent origin, but all were apparently the work of the vultures themselves. In the oldest and largest of them, a full-grown man could have reclined without his head or feet being seen projecting over the edge.

Under these eyries we sat watching, listening to the life and bustle of the woods, and waiting in the hope of getting a shot at the vultures which our approach had scared away. For four days we went to the splendid woods every morning, and never did we return to our vessel empty-handed. No fewer than eight large vultures, several eagles, and numerous smaller birds fell to our guns, while valuable observations, which fascinated us all, added zest and interest to our sport. But when the last rays of the sun had disappeared, the younger portion of the population assembled about our ship. Violin and bagpipes joined in a wonderful but simple melody, and youths and maidens danced the rhythmically undulating national round dances in honour of their august guest.

After we had hunted successfully on both sides of the Danube, we took leave, on the fifth day after our arrival in Čerewič, of our most devoted host, the lord of the estates, and continued our journey down the river. In three-quarters of an hour we passed Peterwardein, a small, antiquated, but picturesquely situated stronghold, and an hour and a half later, we reached Carlowitz, near which we spent the night. The next morning we reached Kovil, the goal of our journey.

In the neighbourhood of this large village, and girdled by cultivated fields, there are woods in which the oak predominates, but which have such a dense undergrowth, that notwithstanding the many villages about, the wolves and wild-cats lead a threatening but scarcely threatened existence in them. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that birds of prey of all kinds, especially sea-eagles, imperial eagles, spotted eagles, and booted eagles, “short-toed eagles”, kites, hawks, horned and other owls should have chosen them as a nesting-place, and that they should also harbour all kinds of small birds. Sure of rich booty the Crown Prince and his brother-in-law directed their steps to these woods, while Eugen von Homeyer and I tried our luck up-stream beyond the village, in a marsh which the flood, then at its height, had transformed into a great lake.

A surprisingly rich and varied life reigned in this marsh, though only a very small fraction of the feathered population could be seen, and indeed the tide of migration was still in full flood. Great flocks of black terns flew in almost unbroken succession up the river, sometimes assembling in compact swarms, sometimes distributing themselves over the whole breadth of the flooded Danube; hundreds of glossy or dark ibises wandered up and down the stream, flying in the usual wedge-shaped order towards or away from the neighbouring river Theiss, apparently still in search of suitable nesting-places; purple herons, common herons, and squacco herons strode about fishing in all accessible parts of the great expanse of water; marsh-barriers flew along their accustomed routes carrying long reed-stalks to their nests; ducks, mating a second time because the flood had robbed them of their eggs, rose noisily from the water on the approach of our small flat boat, while grebes and dabchicks dived for safety--in short, every part of the vast expanse was peopled. A forester well acquainted with all the paths through the submerged wood, awaited us in a house which rose above the flood like an island, and acted as our guide through a forest-wilderness which far surpassed all that we had hitherto seen, for the water had added new obstacles to those always present. Brushing past many branches which must usually be high above the ground, often stooping beneath boughs which blocked our way, we attempted to find a route between half or wholly fallen trees, logs, and drift-wood, and to penetrate to the heart of the forest. Brooding mallards, whose nests in the tops of the willows had been spared by the flood, did not rise on our approach, even though we glided by within a yard of them. Eared grebes, which were out on the open water, when they saw us, swam sideways into the green thicket of tree-crowns, chiefly willows, which rose just above the surface; water-wagtails ran from one piece of drift-wood to another; spotted woodpeckers and nut-hatches clung to the tree-trunks close to the water, and searched for food as usual. One picture of bird-life crowded upon another; but all seemed unfamiliar, because altered by the prevailing conditions. To reach a sea-eagle’s eyrie we were obliged to wade a long distance; to visit a raven’s nest we had to make a wide détour. Hunting in the approved fashion was impossible under such circumstances, but our expedition rewarded us richly. To me personally it afforded the pleasure of seeing one of the best of the feathered architects of Europe, the penduline titmouse, at work on its nest, and of observing for the first time its life and habits.

The following day our whole company assembled in one of the woods already mentioned. A Hungarian forester had made preparations for a wolf-drive on a grand scale, but had arranged it so unskilfully that Friend Isegrim succeeded in slipping away unperceived. The unpromising chase was therefore soon abandoned, and the short time which remained to us was devoted to more profitable observation of the bird-life in the forest.

In the course of the same afternoon we left Kovil, reached Peterwardein the same evening, steamed past Fruskagora early in the night, left the vessel once more the following day to hunt in the marsh of Hullo, saw there the noble heron which we had until then sought for in vain, but were obliged to hurry onwards so as not to miss the fast train for Vienna. Gratefully looking back on the days we had spent, and lamenting the swiftness with which they had sped, we steamed rapidly past all the river forests, which had afforded us so much enjoyment, and, with the ardent wish that we might some day return to spend a longer time in it, we took leave of this rich and unique country.

NOTES BY THE EDITOR.

THE BIRD-BERGS OF LAPLAND.

For other pictures of Arctic Natural History the reader may profitably consult the following works:--

Collett, R. Bird Life in Arctic Norway. Trans. by A. H. Cocks (London, 1894).

Nordenskiöld, A. E. The Voyage of the “Vega” Round Asia and Europe, with a Historical Review of Previous Journeys along the North Coast of the Old World (Trans. by A. Leslie, 2 vols., London, 1881).

Gilder, W. H. Ice-Pack and Tundra, an Account of the Search for the Jeanette, and a Sledge Journey through Siberia (8vo, London, 1883. Chiefly personal, not scientific).