Part 20

Linnets flock together as soon as the breeding season is over--some of them to migrate, and others to wander about the country visiting stubble fields and waste lands in search of seeds. It is a very pleasant sight to watch a flock resting on the sunlit top of some tall tree on a fine winter’s day, and hear the sociable little birds holding a kind of chattering concert.

It is almost needless to add that the Linnet is a great favourite as a cage pet. Specimens caught in the autumn soon adapt themselves to confinement, but those taken in the spring frequently mope and die. One has been known to live as many as fourteen years in a cage, but I have never yet heard of a specimen in confinement donning the crimson colour on its head or breast.

The species has derived its name in several European countries from its fondness for linseed.

=THE SWALLOW.=

This deservedly popular harbinger of spring arrives in England about the end of March and beginning of April, and departs again in September, although specimen’s have been seen during every month of the year, and one hardy individual actually managed to live right through a mild winter in Yorkshire not long ago. There is little need for me to describe the appearance of this familiar bird in detail, but it may be well to say that its forehead, chin, and throat are chestnut brown, upper parts generally and a broad bar across the chest steely blue. Under parts dull, buffy white. The adult Swallow may always be distinguished, on the wing or at rest, from either the Swift or the Martin, by its much more deeply forked tail.

Its nest is generally built in a chimney or on a rafter in a barn, stable, or shed, although I have seen it plastered against a smooth whitewashed wall, on a dangling tendril of ivy that had grown through the roof of a shed, under a stone bridge, inside an old limekiln, on a ledge under the eaves of a shed, on a picture-frame, and inside an old tennis shoe left on a ledge in a boat-house. It is made of pellets of mud generally intermixed with straws and lined with dead grass and feathers. The structure differs in shape according to the site selected for it. Frequently it is formed like half or two-thirds of a saucer when plastered against a wall or rafter, but when on a flat surface the outside consists of a circular wall of mud.

The eggs, numbering from four to six, are white, spotted and blotched with dark, reddish-brown, and underlying specks of grey.

This bird’s song is one of the most joyous and spontaneous in all the realms of Nature, and the poet might well say:

“Thou hast no sadness in thy song.”

It is uttered both whilst the melodist is flashing at lightning speed through the air and at rest on some house-top or tree, and is an exceedingly sweet and exhilarating warble frequently repeated.

During dull weather, when swallows fly low, they utter a note like wet wet, and their alarm cry has been fittingly written down as feetafeet-feetafetit. Inside buildings they also use another, which is a clear, ringing pink pink.

=THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN.=

The Golden-crested Wren, or Gold-crest, as it is frequently called, has the distinction of being our smallest British bird, measuring only three and a half inches in length. It is a widely distributed resident, and breeds comparatively close to London and other large towns. On the forehead and round the eyes it is whitish, tinged with olive-green. Crown pale orange in front and bright yellow towards the hind part. The feathers are somewhat lengthened, and form a crest bounded on either side by a streak of black. Upper parts olive-green; wings dusky black with two transverse white bars. Tail quills dusky, edged with yellowish-green. Under parts yellowish-grey, inclining to buff on throat, breast, and sides. The female is not so brightly coloured as her mate.

The nest is generally, though not always, suspended from the branch of a cedar, spruce, fir, yew, or holly tree at varying heights from the ground. I have seen it in a furze bush, and at an elevation of thirty feet or more from the ground in a fir tree. It breeds in shrubberies, plantations, and spinnies, and makes its nest of green moss, lichens, fine grass, spiders’ webs, and hair beautifully felted together and lined with liberal quantities of down and feathers.

The eggs number six or seven, as a rule, and are pale flesh or yellowish-white in ground colour, spotted and blotched with reddish-brown, the markings being most numerous at the larger end.

The Gold-crest’s song is like its singer--very small, soft, and sweet. It is difficult to hear, especially towards the end, unless the listener happens to be very close. In the neighbourhood of Birmingham I once had the pleasure of listening to a bird of this species in an evergreen hedge only two or three feet away from me, and was greatly surprised at the sweet melodiousness of its limited notes.

The sound of its call is something like tsit, tsit.

Vast flocks of this wee species occasionally hazard the perils of a journey from the Continent across the North Sea in order to visit our shores, and at such times alight upon the rigging of fishing smacks to rest, and crowd round lighthouses in incredible numbers.

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