THE CUCKOO AND OTHER BIRDS.
(To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."I think that many of your readers wish that Mr. Hart, of Christchurch, Hants, would break his silence and contribute a letter on this subject to your columns. About two years ago you published a letter of mine, in which I tried to give some of his experiences and to explain his theory. Happening to be in Hampshire shortly afterwards I took the whole of the Spectator correspondence down to him, and left it with him, saying I hoped I had not misquoted him. I have not had an opportunity of seeing him since. Everybody who has visited his museum—a real abode of beauty—and talked with him knows that he is a very great ornithologist, and I think I am right in saying that he has himself seen a cuckoo lay an egg on a bank, take it in her bill, and insert it into a nest. It appears as if all cuckoos aid not act alike—and, indeed, why should they? Here is a quotation from Yarrell's British, Birds, revised by Professor Newton, and published (fourth edition) 1::,:, The words are in Vol. II., p. 391. They follow various accounts of a like nature. "The, most satisfactory evidence on the point is that of Herr Adolf Muller, a forester at Gladenbach, in Darmstadt, who says (Zool. Garten, 1866, p. 374) that through a telescope he watched a cuckoo as she laid her egg on a bank, and then saw her slope her head to the ground, take the egg in her widely opened bill, and carry it to a wagtail's nest close at hand, in which he immediately afterwards found it." (The italics are my own.) Everybody is interested in the cuckoo's real secret. I saw it stated in a newspaper the other day that, according to " one of our experts" the female cuckoo does not "cuckoo," but gives a sort of "bubbling laugh." But I have often heard the same bird do both! About a month ago I watched a cuckoo flying from tree to tree, and ho. (or was it she') " bubbled " and "cuckooed" alternately with the greatest precision. Another day I was walking along a path fringed by young pines in our quiet garden and heard a cuckoo coming vociferously over the tops of the low trees. The bird flew out just a yard above my head, swerved, gave the loudest "bubbling laugh I had ever heard, and then flew off, once more " cuckoo-ing" with all its might. The laugh is certainly a very curious sound. To me it suggests either anger or alarm.
When is Mr. Gordon going to give us an article on snipe? Until my husband did some (very necessary) draining this place was alive with them in spring. I have counted eight or nine rising up to the sky, just over the garden, at sunset, and then shooting downwards with the long, eerie throbbing of their drums. I believe it is accepted that both the male and female can produce the sound—from their outspread tail-feathers. Snipe seem to be intoxicated by moonlight. During the recent hot weather I listened to a pair from eleven to twelve one night from my open bedroom window. They appeared to be in a perfect ecstasy of love-making, among the mists and dews of the meadow, under a most beautiful moon. The drumming hardly ceased for a moment, which proved that two birds were making it—there was not enough time for the silent rise into the air before the downward rush of sound for one bird to be the only performer. There was, too, a slight but distinct difference of note. In the intervals the little jagged "saw" of the mating call rang out with an abandon one somehow never hears in the day. I knew the spot where the nest was—I have found one there almost every year. But I am afraid the snipe are all leaving us now.
You had an article once on sea-birds coining inland. The sea is ten miles away from here, but the gulls are always about, especially in hay-time, hawking over the wind-rows and cocks in the evening, just like the owls, only they come and go earlier in the night. They swoop down on to the meadow with exactly the same movements that they swoop down on to the sea. I think they hunt for and eat the tiny field-voles. A lot of voles' nests are always exposed when the hay is cut. Once, in mount- ing through the gorses of what a Wiltshire farm-bailiff taught us to call " the hangar," I surprised a great herring-gull making a meal off—what do you think?—a dead rabbit! The bird flew heavily away when I appeared, and I examined the rabbit, which was torn open and bleeding at the throat. I thought that a stoat had perhaps begun the work for Mr. Gull until I read in Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's absorbing book, The Fowler in Ireland, that the herring-gull will always eat flesh if it can get it, tearing it asunder with its strong bill with an ease that is astonishing.
The kestrels nest in our little Lancashire wood, but circum- stances over which I have no control (namely, sex and age) are in. the way of any personal examination of their home. I think the love-cry of the kestrel the most beautiful sound in the world—like a fairy's laugh. People say it is like the wry-neck's. I have never heard a wry-neck, but I cannot believe anything is really like the long, wild, pealing sweetness of the little
falcon's cry as the male bird lies home through the blue to his mate, and she rises high above the pines to meet him, joining (I think) in his love-sang as they circle round and round. Once I was nearly attacked by a pair of kestrels. Their young had hatched ant, and were, I knew, on the ground not very far away. I could hear the " chink, chink " all round me as it were. But the parent birds came beating and screaming about my head, and I went away out of regard for their feelings. The name " kestrel " is from the old French kesterelle, a little bell. The " chink, chink " of the young has a curiously metallic sound just like a piece of iron struck against a stone.—I am, f We have been obliged to shorten our correspondent's letter. e--ED. Spectator.]
Previous page
