Part 3

For several years we have found seedling tomatoes growing in the kitchen garden, and in 1911 we gathered seven pounds of green tomatoes from two plants to make into jam.

When first I came here, and for a long time afterwards, "Erysimum cheiranthoides" was always among the kitchen garden weeds, and one year I found growing in a bed of onions its near relative "Erysimum orientale," which is quite a rare British plant.

Greater celandine, a rather handsome perennial with somewhat glaucous leaves and bright yellow flowers, used to be an abundant weed on the banks and among the bushes, and is still (1911) to be found in the garden, though in diminished quantity.

In 1889, a strange plant appeared which puzzled me a good deal at first. It was tall and straggling, but had no flowers. Next spring there were several of the same plants, very much branched with something of the habit of a mugwort, and long spikes of flowers at the end of every branch. I discovered it to be a species of "Ambrosia," a native of North America, but I soon discovered also that it increased by underground runners in every direction, and was only too thankful to get rid of it.

Two years before, I had found another visitor, this time from South America, with bright yellow flowers, evidently allied to forget-me-not, which proved to be an "Amsinckia" (intermedia ?). There were about 20 plants of this annual in one border and several others in other parts of the garden. With some consideration, but with no particular care on my part, it has maintained itself in more or less quantity in the same herbaceous border ever since.

In 1897, a single plant of an "Allium" appeared and grew to a height of more than five feet, straight up with very stout stems, one and a half inches in circumference, and handsome heads of reddish-green bell-shaped flowers on drooping stalks, which afterwards, in fruit, became quite straight and upright. I found it to be "Allium Dioscorides," a native of Sicily and Sardinia. There were many tubers at the root when I took it up, but none of them ever grew so tall and fine as the original.

One or two plants that I have introduced myself have proved very tiresome weeds. In 1875 or thereabouts, I brought back from the wild part of a large garden in the neighbourhood a balsam with rather a conspicuous yellow flower ("Impatiens noli-me-tangere," I think). It made itself at home at once, but as it would keep within no bounds, I have done all I could "to get without it," as they would say here, but it defies me to my face and in spite of relentless persecution, again and again every spring it comes up smiling in an abundant crop.

So indeed does a tall polygonum ("P. cuspidatum" I believe it is) that I brought back from the same garden about the same time. It absolutely refuses to budge from the place where I first allowed it to grow. It does not perpetuate itself by seed like the balsam, but from little odds and ends of rootlets and suckers that hide themselves in the soil.

What I take to be a variety of "Oxalis corniculata," a very pretty little thing with dark reddish-brown leaves and deep yellow flowers, is another uncontrollable subject. It is perennial and yet increases by seed as fast as a balsam.

A plant which on the top of a stone wall is very pretty, "Linaria vulgaris," has proved a veritable plague to me in the garden. I had it sent to me originally by a nurseryman for the "Peloria" variety, and as if the disappointment of that were not enough, it added insult to injury, or rather injury to insult, by running below the surface in a provoking and persevering manner and showing itself in most unexpected places. Although the normal "vulgaris" is so irrepressible, I have found "Peloria" quite the reverse, and have never been able to keep it above a year or two.

The double-flowered varieties of most plants are, as a rule, more difficult than the ordinary single, but a little potentilla ("reptans" ?) with a yellow ball of double flower has proved an exception here. No single-flowered plant could get over and under the ground faster than this has done.

In 1886, in an out-of-the-way path among trees, an orchid, "Epipactis latifolia," came up in the very middle. I took care that it was not disturbed, and found it again in exactly the same place four years later, no sign of it having been seen in the interval. Never before, or since, have I found a plant of that or any other orchis growing wild in the garden.

One year (1887) in a border nearly full of rhododendrons, close to the front door, a curious looking thing made its way above the ground, which, at first sight might have been put down as something between a hyacinth and a lily-of-the-valley, but was said to be "Muscari comosum." I had never planted it and during the fifteen years that I had been here had never seen anything like it. I very carefully marked the spot when it died down, but from that time to this (1911) during all the 24 years that have passed it has never shown itself again.

III.

BIRDS--THRUSHES.

You can feel something like affection even for a plant, when you have watched over it and attended to its likes and dislikes as to aspect, soil, moisture, shade and so on, and when it has responded to your care and rewarded you for the pains you have spent upon it, but birds become personal friends, it is an interest and amusement to study their characters and habits, and a delight to listen to their voices. And this friendship is not for any one particular bird (though of course there may be that sometimes), but for the particular species of bird, any one of which that you happen to meet with anywhere seems like an old friend. A lively impudent tom-tit for instance is the same amusing companion and it is the same pleasure to hear his cheery note, whether you find him in a suburban garden or in some shady corner of a wood.

Of course it is a day to be marked with a white stone when you come across a new or a rare bird, but if you watch the commonest sympathetically and intelligently you have an endless fund of interest and amusement. The quarrels, the loves, the boldness and ingenuity even of a sparrow may divert your mind pleasantly and help you to put away worries. Then how eagerly in spring does one listen for the first note of a willow-warbler, what an interest is the first sight of a swallow, and how gladly one welcomes each of our summer visitors as in turn they arrive from passing the winter in the Sahara oases or among our friends in the Transvaal or Cape Colony.

In a country unexplored or newly settled it may not be the same, but in England there is no need to spoil the charm of friendship by use of the collector's gun. All British birds have been so well illustrated and described that it ought to be possible to tell most of them by careful observation without actually having them in one's hand. In the interests of science, to make sure of the discovery of a new species or the distribution of a known one, birds must sometimes be shot (and after all to be shot is a less cruel end than to fall a prey to their natural enemies), but to shoot a well-known bird simply for the sake of its skin is another matter. A man who shoots every rare bird he sees, that he may add it to his private collection, is sacrificing bird-life for his own selfish pleasure and disregarding the sentiments and interests of the great body of nature-lovers and students. The true naturalist does not collect specimens as he would postage stamps; to study the life of a wren in its natural surroundings is more to him than anything he can do with the dried skin of a golden eagle.

They say that there is in Switzerland a law which forbids the shooting of any bird without a licence. If some such law could be enforced here, rare birds that seek hospitality among us would no longer be at the mercy of every idle lout who happens to have a gun. And is it impossible that children might be taught to find pleasure in watching, and not, as seems generally the case now, in destroying life?

We often have a pair of missel-thrushes ("shercocks" in Cheshire) nesting here. Generally they build in a tree at some distance away, where they make their presence known by noisy attacks on other birds; but once they had their nest in a Scotch fir close to the house, and then they were so quiet as almost to escape notice altogether.

There were two nests in the old churchyard this year (1912). One in a Spanish Chestnut was about thirty feet from the ground, in the middle of a clump of little shoots that grew straight up on the top side of a thick branch. This branch overhangs a patch of grass running close to the boundary wall and on this green boys were playing football with much shouting and noise every evening. The nest stood out plainly to be seen, and for a week before they flew (which they did on April 20th) you could easily count all four young ones. The other nest was in a yew, under which there is a seat in summer, and was simply set on the top of one of the lowest spreading boughs without any attempt at concealment. It was at the end of the bough and not six feet from the ground, within easy reach of anyone. It could, however, only be seen when you were actually under the tree and probably would never have been noticed at all but for the behaviour of the birds themselves. After the eggs were hatched they attacked everybody who went under or even near the tree, swooping down suddenly from you didn't know where and almost dashing into your face, indeed they would often hit your hat. I am glad to say this display of courage was not wasted, for the young birds safely flew on May 17th.

Missel-thrush is said to be short for mistletoe-thrush, and to mark the singular taste of the bird for mistletoe berries. Mistletoe is scarce with us, but they do appear to depend more upon berries of every kind than either throstles or blackbirds, and one year I remember when the yews bore an extraordinary crop of berries, the trees were quite alive with the missel-thrushes that came to eat them. I would say, by the way, that a great part of the holly berries are sometimes left untouched by birds, and I have seen trees in summer quite red with the berries of the previous year.

One or two missel-thrushes generally come to the food-stand in winter and show themselves expert in getting fat from the supposed sparrow-proof receptacles.

Though missel-thrushes are common their song is not familiar. It has been described as much better than a throstle's; I do not know if that is the general opinion. It certainly is simpler without the same repetition, and it has seemed to me more mellow, more like a blackbird's when I have heard it, but that is not often. Throstles will sometimes sing continuously all the winter through, and early in the year I have listened most carefully to catch the notes of their bigger brothers, but only very seldom with success. They have, however, an autumn song which I first noticed at the end of September a good many years ago. I became aware one day of a bird's song that seemed to be sometimes the note of a blackbird, sometimes of a throstle. After listening for several days I came to the conclusion that it must have been one of the many starlings that were singing everywhere, one that had learnt more or less successfully to imitate a throstle. However, I never could make sure, for I never could catch sight of the singer, he would hide himself in a holly or a yew, and would at once stop singing if I went near. At last, one day I heard him at the top of a sycamore which was nearly bare of leaves, and managed to bring a glass to bear on him; even then his body was hidden by a bough and his head was all that I could see, but the head was plainly that of a thrush. While I watched I could distinctly see him turn his eye down on me, and he was off in an instant; but though I only got a glimpse as he flew away, there was no mistaking the flight of a missel-thrush. It seemed curious to me at the time that he should be singing at all then, and that he should be so shy about it.

Song-thrushes, or throstles as they are called in Cheshire, are always plentiful, but not always to the same extent. They were, for instance, very much thinned in numbers by the hard winter of 1895, but in a couple of years they abounded again, and I heard people complain of their night's rest being spoilt, there were so many and they sang so early and so loud. From April to June they sing almost incessantly, from earliest light until quite dark. They begin at three in the morning, or even earlier, and sing their loudest for about an hour; then there seems somewhat of a lull, but they soon start again in full chorus, and go on singing more or less throughout the day, sometimes until past nine at night. In 1905, on the longest day of the year, I woke at 2-30 a.m. to hear a throstle in full song just outside my window, and at 9-30 p.m. a throstle, almost certainly the same bird, was singing in the same place. I have often wondered how, with so much time devoted to musical exercises, they manage to find enough for the more important business of feeding themselves and their hungry broods.

A blackbird's song is, I think, always a love song, but mere exuberance of spirits will make a throstle sing. I have seen one sing snatches of his song whilst hunting for worms on the grass, as though he were too full of joyousness to contain himself, and a couple of them will sing at one another during intervals of quarrelling on the ground. There seems at all times more rivalry and contention between throstles throughout the whole season, and less of the spirit of camaraderie that one so often sees with blackbirds, at least when once they have settled the momentous question of pairing.

Within the bounds of general similarity much variety can be heard in the songs of throstles; no two seem to be exactly alike, and some birds are far better singers, have a much clearer, more musical note than others.

In 1907, and again in 1909, I noticed that throstles were in full song everywhere on July 15th, just as though it had been the middle of May.