Part 4

A particular throstle will choose his favourite spot to sing from, and will keep to it more or less throughout the season. The point of a gable of the house is one such place (it is a Cheshire belief that a throstle brings you good luck when he chooses your house to sing from), the top of the highest chimney has been another, and the weathercock on the outbuildings has been chosen year after year by a throstle as his own peculiar stand. This last is a favourite platform for the musical performances of other birds as well; a robin constantly uses it, and a swallow, and more than once I have seen a little wren there singing away with all his might, a might altogether out of proportion to his tiny body.

Whilst most throstles seem to like as high a perch as possible to sing from, I remember one that habitually poured forth the flood of his melody raised above the level of the ground by a clod of earth only.

One morning (in March, 1897) I heard a throstle uttering a peculiar shrill kind of cry, not a long-drawn-out note such as I have twice heard from a blackbird, but a succession rather of short notes. At first I couldn't make out what or where the noise was, but traced it after a time to the thrush, who continually uttered the cry as he was hunting for worms on the grass.

A standing marvel is the way in which a thrush can tell that there is a worm below the ground at a particular place. As he goes hopping about in a promiscuous sort of way, he suddenly stops with his head on one side looking and listening for a second, then he pounces on the exact spot and forthwith pulls out a worm. Sometimes he makes a mistake, or, at all events, fails to make a catch, but not often. How does he do it? Does his quick sight detect some slight movement, or his quick ear some slight sound? Or has he any other sense of smell or sensation that helps him? Another marvel about the matter to anyone who has himself tried to pull a worm out of the ground is the ease with which a thrush manages so neatly and quickly to extract its victim entire.

I have found a throstle's nest in the side of a haystack, and was told of one in a pigstye and of another inside the porch of a house. In 1901 a throstle built in the roof of the lychgate of the churchyard close to this garden. Although the first nest was taken she made another in the same place and had very nearly hatched her eggs when again the thoughtless cruelty of boys made all her labour vain and abused the confidence she had so bravely shown in men. She used to sit on quite calmly, though only just above the heads of people as they went through the gate.

Generally speaking, throstles are so tame here that they hardly move out of your way, at most hopping a foot or two further off; and one will go on with his song undisturbed as I pass through an archway of pink thorn on which he is perched not two feet above. They are naturally, I think, more friendly in their disposition towards human beings than blackbirds, which go clattering off whenever they see you near them.

In May, 1902, there must have been at least 20 throstles' nests in the garden itself. There were five, all in holly bushes, within 30 yards, by the side of one path, two in one tree, both of which had young ones in them at the same time. One bird had a nest just over the entrance to the house porch, through which we were in and out the whole day long, and we saw nothing of it until the young were hatched. Another chose an extraordinarily exposed situation, in a rhododendron just opposite the front door, from which we could see her quite plainly as she sat. The nest was actually not more than a foot or so from a little narrow path. We were constantly up and down this path and could hardly avoid brushing the leaves at the end of the very bough on which the nest was built, yet I never once saw her fly off. She used to keep her eye on us, but did not move even if we stood still only a few feet away and looked at her. This nest was under continual observation from the laying of the first egg to the flight of the last nestling, which remained for the best part of a day after the rest had flown.

On the other hand, in strange contrast to this confidence, there were three nests farther away from the house (one indeed absurdly close to a gate in constant use), from which the birds flew off with a loud, startled cry if one waited for a moment near them. In one of these three nests the brood was reared, but of the other two one was deserted and one taken.

In 1899 a friend in the village assured me that there had been a throstle's nest with eight eggs in it close to her house. As only four of them, she said, hatched, perhaps the first hen was killed after she had laid her complement of eggs, and the cock brought home another mate to his ready-made nest.

I find a note that once I saw throstles join with starlings in their raid upon elder-berries, but I have seen nothing since to confirm this.

Until the winter of 1910-11 I very seldom found a throstle attempt to get the fat put out for tits; they generally content themselves with the crumbs that have fallen on the ground underneath. If the weather is at all severe they will come with sparrows to the fowls' food, but in a sharp, continuous frost they disappear almost entirely. (Blackbirds and some missel-thrushes remain.) This was very marked in February, 1902. Before the severe cold began throstles were plentiful; after it had continued for a few days not a single one was to be seen; but when the thaw set in, in less than a week they abounded again on every side.

Some redwings come here every winter, but they are less common than fieldfares and they are not so noticeable. The points of difference between a redwing and a throstle, the rather smaller size, the red on the side, the slight variations in shades of colour and markings, may easily be passed over.

I have from my window seen a single redwing quite close to the house, in company with a single fieldfare, both busy with the holly berries, and in February, 1909, I saw all five of the commoner British thrushes collected together and between them quite covering a field which had lately been broken up by a subsoil cultivator.

A farmer tells me that the local name for redwing is "Kit," but I see in "The Birds of Cheshire" that "Kit" is given as one of the names for fieldfare.

We see fieldfares chiefly when they first arrive in October, and again in early spring, before they leave, but, of course, there are some with us most of the winter. The people here call them "Bluebacks," and it was remarked as a curious thing in the late cold spring of 1891 that on April 24th bluebacks were heard on one side of a field and a cuckoo on the other.

Blackbirds are, I think, nearly as plentiful as throstles, in spite of relentless persecution by strawberry-growing market gardeners. Sometimes, indeed, one is oneself compelled to own that we have a few more blackbirds than we really want. In hot, dry summers, when the ground is hard, they do much damage to the apple crop. Not content with making short work with the "windfalls," they peck holes in some of the best fruit on the trees. I noticed this especially in 1899, and again in 1901 and 1911. In 1899 I saw four cock blackbirds amicably devouring a fallen apple together.

Though a blackbird's song is beautifully mellow, it is generally disconnected and fragmentary, but I remember hearing one once that seemed continuous, or at least much more so than usual.

One day at the end of March (in 1895) I saw perched on a twig of an oak tree and sitting quite close up against the trunk, a cock blackbird, which continually uttered a small, thin sharp note, almost like the squeaking of a slate pencil. He sat still in the same position for a considerable time, only opening his mouth at intervals of about a minute, or half a minute, to make this doleful noise. The same year, on June 15th, in exactly the same place, a cock blackbird went through exactly the same performance.

Every winter blackbirds have been amongst the most regular pensioners at the food-stand.

Several times during May in 1898, and again in 1899 and 1900 and since, I noticed a meeting of three, always, I think, three, cock blackbirds at one particular spot, always the same, near a holly tree on the lawn, which happens to be just opposite my window, where I could watch them easily and unobserved. They seemed to go through a regular set performance, like a game or a dance. They did not fight, though they sometimes sparred a little, but ran round and round and in and out, following and passing one another. It reminded me of a friendly gathering of husbands for amusement, while their wives were busy with household cares at home!

I was much interested one day (March, 1902) in the proceedings of two pair of blackbirds. One very elegant cock, slender and graceful, with intensely black coat and very bright orange bill, was seeking to impress the hen of his choice by a series of little runs on every side of her, with his tail spread out and sweeping the grass, his body in the shape of a bow, his beak almost touching the ground; meanwhile, the object of all this attention seemed to consider it a mere matter of course and to be calmly indifferent. Presently another cock, not nearly so spruce, came on the scene accompanied by another mate. The gallant dandy evidently had no stomach for fighting, and promptly disappeared behind a holly bush when the newcomer threatened to assault him. His partner, however, was made of sterner stuff, and without more ado attacked and drove away both the intruders.

I have never heard that there is any real difference in size, but hen blackbirds appear bigger than cocks, just as young gulls in immature plumage seem larger than old ones. I suppose the different colour has something to do with it, and perhaps the cock's feathers are more closely set than the hen's.

My wife told me that she had seen one evening in September (1907) 16 blackbirds on the tennis ground together. This seems perhaps rather a large order, as they say, but in the following September I counted nine myself, to the best of my belief, all of them cocks.

IV.

CHATS, ROBINS AND WARBLERS.

In spring, and again in autumn, wheatears pass through, and may be seen about for several days at a time. In April and May, 1908, a pair stayed so long in some rough ground near the bank of the Ship Canal that I thought they might be going to take up their quarters there for the season, but by May 31st they had disappeared.

We always have a fair number of whinchats in the meadows, and hardly a year passes without seeing them on the grass in the garden itself. One very wet summer, when in the low-lying lands the haycocks were standing for days surrounded by water, I remember being struck by the number of whinchats to be seen perching and chatting first on one haycock and then on another.

Though whinchats are so comparatively common, and their usual note, exactly like the knocking of two pebbles together, is constantly heard, their pretty little song, a cadence of a few notes repeated over and over again, I do not remember to have noticed here.