Part 19

It is, I must confess, always a saddening experience for me to hear this little songster’s notes ringing clear and sweet from the interior of a wee prison house tied up in a black cloth, and carried along some dismal street beneath the arm of a costermonger. However, it is only fair to add that these men are, as a rule, devoted to their pets, and treat them with the utmost kindness. A great authority upon the subject says that if well treated a Chaffinch will live in confinement for twenty years. It has also been asserted as a curious fact that if an adult male Chaffinch is caught before Whitsuntide he will sing in a cage, but if he should be made a prisoner after this date he will die of grief at being parted from his mate and young ones.

Chaffinches pair towards the end of February and throughout March, although flocks of “bachelors” may occasionally be seen as late as the first week in May, and commence building operations, as a rule, about the middle of April. They build deep, cup-shaped, and wonderfully neat little nests of moss, wool, lichens, and cobwebs, beautifully felted together and securely fixed in the forks of small trees in orchards, hedgerows, and woods. It is generally adorned on the outside with bits of green moss or grey lichens that will render it similar in appearance to its surroundings, and thus help it to escape detection.

The eggs number from four to six, but clutches of five are the general rule, and are pale greenish-blue in ground colour, clouded with faint reddish-brown and spotted and streaked with dull purplish-brown of various shades.

The female Chaffinch lacks the rich colouring of her mate, especially on the head and breast, and is a trifle smaller. The young are fed upon insects by both parent birds, and resemble their mother in appearance whilst wearing the first coat of feathers.

=THE PIED FLYCATCHER.=

The Pied Flycatcher is a singularly well-named species, because it answers both adjective and noun exactly.

The male is not quite as large as a Robin, and is, generally speaking, black and white, as shown in our illustration on the next page. In fact, a little girl who saw the picture, exclaimed, “What a pretty wee Magpie!” The small patch of white on the forehead varies in size. In some individuals it is quite conspicuous, and in others scarcely visible. The female lacks it altogether, and is generally less pronounced in her colours than her mate.

This species is partial to certain parts of the country, and although by no means common is to be met with in the six northern counties of England, in Wales, and in some parts of Scotland. Some authorities say that it is most numerous in the Lake District, but I have met with far more specimens in certain parts of the Principality than anywhere else.

The male has a very pretty, though short and oft-repeated song. It resembles that of the Redstart so closely that it is difficult to say with certainty which bird is producing the music unless the singer be seen. This also applies to its call notes.

A male Pied Flycatcher is a creature of decided character. The one figured in our photograph was busy feeding his mate, sitting on six beautiful pale blue eggs, in a hole in an old tree, which had been struck and partially destroyed by lightning, when a friend of mine and I discovered him. Upon our examining the nesting site the female fluttered out, and joining her mate, they flitted about together from tree to tree until he evidently thought it was time for her to return to her maternal duties. She was, however, afraid to venture back to her nest because my camera stood within a few feet of the entrance hole, and flew nervously from one branch to another in the neighbouring trees. Her mate, with the evident intention of showing her that there was no cause for alarm, came along and, alighting right in front of my apparatus, took a leisurely peep inside the nesting hole. As this had no visible effect upon her nerves he went off and secured a fat, green caterpillar, which he would not offer her anywhere, although she shivered her little wings in supplication, excepting on the threshold of their breeding quarters.

As even this kind of inducement failed, he indignantly gulped down the food, and with a great show of anger, began to chase her round and round, up and down, until at last he forced her indoors. Later on, this female grew bolder, however, and I succeeded in photographing her on the gnarled trunk of the lightning-blasted tree.

A precisely similar kind of thing happened at another nest, but in this instance the lady was stronger minded, and refused to be bullied into the performance of her duties.

In this particular wood, which was of no great size, four pairs of these interesting birds lived within a few hundred yards of each other. The males appeared to spend the day in catching winged and other insects for the females, in singing, and chasing each other away from particular spheres of influence.

The Pied Flycatcher, like its commoner relative, the Spotted Flycatcher, is a migratory bird, arriving in this country in April and leaving again in September and October.

It builds its nest generally in holes in trees, but sometimes in old walls. The structure is composed of dry grass, dead leaves, and moss, with an inner lining of hair and feathers.

=THE LINNET.=

Male Linnets vary almost as much in the colour of their feathers as they do in the quality of their songs. A fine specimen, arrayed in all the glory of his summer dress, has the forehead and crown glossy blood-red, the rest of the head black, and sides of the neck brownish-grey, back and upper wing coverts deep reddish-brown; wing quills dusky, edged with white; upper tail coverts dark brown; tail quills brownish-black, edged with white, except in the case of the two centre feathers; chin and throat greyish-white, streaked along the middle with greyish-brown; breast glossy rose-red. The last-named colour varies greatly in intensity, and in some birds is almost absent. In fact, as Yarrell says, perfect specimens are not often met with, and the carmine cap and breast are generally replaced by brownish lake-red.

Some adult male Linnets have lemon-yellow breasts, and in Germany are considered old birds and the best singers.

The female is a trifle smaller than the male and lacks the red on the top of the head and breast.

This species is distinguished from the Lesser Redpole by having no white bar on the wings and no black upon the chin, and from the Twite, with which it is likely to be confused, by the facts that it has a shorter and less deeply forked tail and the male lacking the red on his rump.

Last spring I spent two days on a Surrey common photographing the Stonechat figuring in the little picture which decorates the front cover of this book. He was bringing food to his offspring in a nest situated amongst some stunted heather growing in a sheltered dell formed by two gorse-clad ridges about eighty feet in height and a hundred yards apart. Although many Linnets were still roaming the countryside in flocks, numbers were busy love-making and pairing close around me, and I shall never forget the sweetness of the twittering and warbling that went on all day long.

The carols were generally sung from the topmost spray of some furze bush, which was a golden blaze of bloom, but occasionally the vocalist would utter his sweetest notes when dropping gracefully through the air to some intended resting-place.

This bird has received a great deal of attention from the poets, some of whom have described its song as a “careless lay” and others as a

“None-offending song of quiet prettiness.”

The call note of the species is a shrill twit, twit and wee, tye wee.

A Linnet’s nest is made of small twigs, fibrous roots, dry grass, stems, moss, and wool, with an inner lining of hair, feathers, rabbit and vegetable down; and is situated in gorse, and broom bushes, white and black thorn bushes, tall heather, and juniper. I have found a nest ten feet from the ground, and two nests quite upon it.

The eggs number four to six, are greyish-white in ground colour, tinged with blue or green and speckled and spotted with purple-red and reddish-brown.

A very strange thing about this species is that it appears to grow shyer during the breeding season, whereas nearly all other birds grow bolder. This peculiar characteristic, of course, increases the difficulty of photographing the creature.