The Dartford Warbler A BIRD-WATCHER ever si g hs for new worlds to
conquer : but his victories are those of peace and involve no shedding of blood unless he belongs to the pestiferous clique who collect skins or eggs. To find a bird that is new to him, and study it in its natural haunts, contents him.
For years I had wished to know the Dartford Warbler. W. H. Hudson had written delightfully about it, and other naturalists had described its charm, though less satisfyingly. But in the districts known to me it was absent. At length, through the kindness of a friend, I Was given information about one' of its former haunts, and a letter of introduction to a splendid old naturalist and sportsman who lived in the neighbourhood. Though incapacitated by years and 'infirmity from accompanying me, he directed me to the place where, many years ago, he had shown the birds and their nests to Hudson. But he told me that the species was sadly diminished ; and well might-it be, for before the days of bird-protection a so-called naturalist boasted that he had taken the nests and eggs of sixty Dartford Warblers and sold them for profit. As a result they were exterminated over a tract of country where once they had abounded. Possibly, my informant said, I might find one pair, but he doubted if there were more.
All this was not encouraging. However, I started early the next morning ; my venue was a wide and breezy common, girdled with firs, its high ground covered with heather, but its low-lying parts bedizened with tufts of cotton-grass. Much of its gorse had been burnt, but a few ragged, straggling clumps survived, and these I examined carefully. For two hours I searched in vain ; it was a dry, hot day and I began to feel a little jaded. I had already reached the spot to which my friend had directed me : it looked as if my luck was out. I sat down on the edge of a little coombe near the extreme edge of the common feeling ill-used and disgruntled. I had not been seated more than a minute when across my line of vision a small dark bird flew with a jerky, spasmodic flight, and perched on the top of a thick clump 'of furze a little to my left. In a moment I had my field- glasses on him : it was a cock Dartford Warbler ! From his vantage point he chattered at me, a scold rather like a whitethroat's " Tchrr-tchrr-tchrr," and then dived into cover. A few seconds later the hen flew up with a beakful of flies, and disappeared after him into the depths of the bush. I suspected that the nest was hidden somewhere deep down on the prickliest part of the gorse, for these birds nest late; but after watching a few minutes I saw that there were three or four fully fledged young skulking and creeping about near their parents. I settled down to enjoy the rare pleasure of observing a new bird. For three hours I watched these little sprites with the utmost delight. Their popular name is " furze-wren," and wren-like indeed they are in joie de vivre and never-say- dyingness ; but to my mind they have a nearer affinity to the common whitethroat ; both are temperamentally volatile and capricious in all their varying moods. This cock was a fidgetty fuss-box of a bird, never still for more than a second. Now he balanced himself on a tip-top spray of furze and sang, a bubbling well-spring of sound, sweet, sibilant and mellifluous ; now he shuttle-cocked impetuously into air, and hovering, with his pretty, slender feet depending, spilled little frothy cascades of Melody. His long tail he handled as an eighteenth-century lady flirted her fan, now raising, now lowering, now opening and shutting it to display handsomely the white margins of its outer feafherS. Sometimes the 'wind blew its slender plumes all askew and nearly toppled him off his balance. Grace and beauty adorned all his attitudes and pretty ways. His colour scheme is delicious ; the tints are sober ; the breast has the dull lustre of claret when light is not shining through it ; head and upper back are greyish blue, recalling the nuthatch's dovelike hues. Though wings, mantle and tail are brownish, the whole plumage appears in some lights 'to be faintly suffused with a greyish tint, which tinges the bird's outline with a faerie insubstantiality. Fancy imagines it surrounded by an exhalation or aura of its elf-like personality. There is a painting by Mr. C. E. Collins which conveys this ethereal quality with great delicacy. But his rarest jewel is his eye—vinoui red, and glowing like a rich ruby when the sunlight catchei it. All the hen's colours are paler and more subdued : she is an anaemic edition of her sponse, and the young closely resemble her. You might casually take them for dun- nocks, but for their longer tails and paler grey colouring. This little family party wandered inconsequently up and down the sides of the coombe, creeping and fluttering in and out of the gorse and heather. The young closely pursued the cock, who. was painstaking in his fatherly attentions. He would alight with a beakful of flies upon a bare branchlet, and the young, flitting to him, quivered their wings, and snatched the meal greedily, without waiting for him to feed them. A general cleansing of beaks followed, as a sort of grace after meat. Evidently they are cleanly in their habits. Sometimes I lost sight of them, but the cock always betrayed their retreat, either by song or protest, and I rediscovered them furtively dodging in and out of the furze stems, picking up micro- scopic morsels for themselves and reiterating a squeaky call-note. I would willingly have stayed all day in the company of these dainty creatures : sunlight and racing clouds dappled the common with mutable light and shade. Bell heather, both pale and dark, grew at my feet ; wild roses spangled the thickets. Though the bloom of gorse had waned it still retained an indefinable charm such as clings to the faded gown of a famous beauty, herself long since turned to dust. Above me skylarks made the air thrill with music ; stonechats and whinchats stuttered and shacked on every branch ; from a distant copse came the croon of turtle-doves. But the idyll ended. I saw the cock furze-wren disappear over the slope of the coombe pursued by a queue of impatient youngsters. I followed, but they were nowhere to be seen. I sat down and waited ; I searched meticulously every patch of heather, every clump of gorse in the vicinity ; I tramped patiently for the rest of the afternoon over each likely haunt, but all was of no avail ; they had vanished, it seemed, into thin air, but more probably into thick heather. I never saw them again, nor any others. Still my day was memorable. The genius of Hudson brooded over the place ; the knowledge that here he had watched and loved these feathery sprites brought me very near to him in spirit. I could see his keen eyes —" a benevolent eagle's," as one who knew him described them to me, capturing and storing up in his marvellous memory every trick and trait, to coin them later on into his inimitable flowing prose for our delight. And with him, too, I cursed those spavin-brained collectors who have almost exterminated this lovely bird. Gorse fires and hard winters may be partly responsible. But the real guilt lies with those who are not content to leave beauty unspoiled ; they must clutch its dead husk to satisfy their selfish acquisitiveness.
E. W. HENDY.
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