Kitabı oku: «A Year with the Birds», sayfa 10

NOTES

Note A. (p. 14.)

I originally intended to have added a short chapter to the book upon the Wild Birds Act and the results obtainable from it; but as other chapters have grown to greater length than I expected, I confine myself to giving in this note, for the convenience of those who are kindly disposed towards the birds, the substance of the Act of 1880, with a few words of explanation. Those who wish for more complete information should send for ‘The Wild Birds Protection Acts 1880 and 1881, with Explanatory Notes’ (published by Horace Cox, The Field Office, 346 Strand, W.C., price 1s.).

The Act in question, which was the result of most careful consideration by experts outside as well as inside Parliament, and was seen through the House of Commons by L. L. Dillwyn, Esq., M.P., one of a family of naturalists, repealed the then existing Acts relating to Wild Birds, which had been passed in the previous years without sufficient care for all interests. Its main provisions were as follows —

1. To protect all wild birds of every description from being caught or killed between the 1st of March and the 1st of August.

2. To except from the above plain rule birds caught or killed by the owner or occupier of land on his own land, or by some person authorized by him.

3. To affix as penalties for offences against the above, for first offence, reprimand and discharge on payment of costs; for subsequent offences, a fine not exceeding five shillings.

4. To schedule a number of birds which may not be caught or killed even on his own land, by owner or occupier, during the close time, and for the catching or killing of which the penalty is a sum not exceeding one pound. These are chiefly rare birds, and a certain number of sea-birds; but among them are Cuckoo, Curlew, Dotterel, Fern-owl or Goat-sucker, Goldfinch, Kingfisher, Lark, Nightingale, Plover, Sandpiper, and Woodpecker.

It will be observed that this Act only protects the living bird of all ages, but not the eggs: so that bird-nesting may still go on with impunity. But the framers of the Act had very good reasons for omitting this, wanton cruelty as it often is; for as the offenders are usually of tender age, they must be appealed to rather by education and moral suasion than by the terrors of the law. It lies with the clergyman and the schoolmaster to see that gross cruelty meets with its proper punishment – cruelty such as that which once occurred in my village, where some boys stopped up with clay the hole of a tree in which a Tit had laid her eggs, because it was too small to allow the entrance of the thieving hands.

The worst kind of bird-nesting is carried on by boys after they leave the village school, when they make this the employment of idle Sundays and holidays. The best remedy for this, and other habits that are worse, is to find other and rational employment for them. Reading-rooms, games, music, etc., I may remark, are usually out of their reach on Sundays, when most of the mischief is done.

Note B. On the Songs of Birds. (pp. 48 and 149.)

As I have some musical knowledge, and have given some attention to the music of birds’ songs, it may be worth while to add one or two remarks on a subject which is as difficult as it is pleasing. I need hardly say that birds do not sing in our musical scale. Attempts to represent their song by our notation, as is done, for example, in Mr. Harting’s Birds of Middlesex, are almost always misleading. Birds are guided in their song by no regular succession of intervals; in other words, they use no scale at all. Their music is of a totally different kind to ours. Listen to a Robin in full song; he, like most other birds, hardly ever dwells for a moment on a single note, but modifies it by slightly raising or lowering the pitch, and slides insensibly into another note, which is perhaps instantly forsaken for a subdued chuckle or trill. The same quality of song may also be well observed in the Black-cap and in the Willow Warbler: the song of the latter descends in an almost imperceptible manner through fractions of a tone, as I have already observed on page 48. Strange as it may seem, the songs of birds may perhaps be more justly compared with the human voice when speaking, than with a musical instrument, or with the human voice when singing; and we can no more represent a bird’s song in musical notation, than the inflections of Mr. Gladstone’s voice when delivering one of his great speeches. The human voice when speaking is musically much freer than when singing; it is not tied down to tones and semitones.

If we remember that there are in our scale only twelve notes to the octave, and that between each of these an infinite number of sounds are possible, we shall get an idea of the endless variety which is open to the birds, and also, but in a less degree, to the human speaking voice.

Some birds, however, occasionally touch notes of our scale, and sometimes, though rarely, two in succession. The Cuckoo, as has often been noticed, sings a major or a minor third when it first arrives; not that the interval is always exact. The Thrush may now and then repeat two or three notes many times over, which almost, if not quite, answer to notes in our scale, usually from C to F of our treble scale. The Nightingale’s crescendo is a good instance of a single definite note; the song of the Chiff-chaff is perfectly plain and unvaried, but its two notes have never corresponded, when I have tested them, to an interval of our scale. Mr. A. H. Macpherson writes to me (Aug. 1886) that he has heard on the Brünig Pass, in Switzerland, three Chiff-chaffs singing at once, all in a different pitch. No. 1 was about a semitone above No. 2; No. 2 about a quarter of a tone above No. 3: the interval being the same in all cases. As my correspondent is a violin-player as well as an ornithologist, his observation may be taken as accurate. The Yellow-hammer’s curious song, which I examined carefully, may certainly be given in musical notation as keeping to a single note (often C or C sharp), but the concluding note of the song it is almost impossible to represent, for the pitch of the original note is raised or lowered by an interval varying from a minor third to less than a semitone. It is to be noted that in this species different individuals (according to my observation) have different modifications of the song; the Yellow-hammers in South Dorset (1886) struck me as singing in a different manner from our Kingham birds, though it would be almost impossible to describe the difference. I think I have noticed the same in the case of the Chaffinch. I have a note, made while travelling in Belgium, to the effect that the Chaffinches there did not seem to sing precisely the same song as ours in England. On the other hand, some observations which I made last year on the Chiff-chaff’s two notes in different localities led me to believe that the various birds were all singing at about the same pitch and in much the same manner.

There are many other interesting points connected with birds’ songs, e. g. the mechanism of the music; the song as a language; the entire absence of song in many birds, some of which, as the Crow, are among the most highly developed and intelligent; and the causes which operate in inducing song. It would be well if some well-qualified naturalist would investigate some of these points with greater attention than they have yet received. It would be hardly possible to find a subject of greater interest to the public, as well as to the savant.

Note C. Fables of the Kingfisher. (p. 242.)

It may be worth while to suggest a possible explanation of the origin of the two curious and beautiful fables about this bird mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny, and current in antiquity. The first of these was, that for seven days before and seven days after the shortest winter day, the sea remained calm; during the first seven (says Aristotle) the bird builds her nest, and in the latter seven occupies herself with eggs and young. The second myth concerned the nest itself: “it is in shape like a cucumber, and larger than the largest sponge; the mouth is small – so small that the sea, as it rises, does not get inside it. It has, however, a great variety of holes, like a sponge, and appears to be made of the bones of a fish!” This last particular is curious, as we know it to be true of the Kingfisher’s nest; and it has led Prof. Sundevall to believe that Aristotle must have received some authentic report of the real nest, and have mixed it up with the mythical account. But his whole account shows plainly that he imagined the nest to be built on the rocks by the seashore, and perhaps even within reach of the waves.

Both these fables may, I think, have been built up on a slender basis of fact – the only fact which the Greeks seem to have known about the bird. Aristotle (Hist. Anim. v. 8. 4) tells us that the ἀλκύων was very seldom seen. “It is the rarest of all birds, for it is only seen at the setting of the Pleiades (about Nov. 9) and at the winter solstice; and it appears at seaports flying as much as round a ship, and then vanishing away.” Whether the bird is still seen in Greece only in late autumn and winter I cannot say; but Mr. Seebohm tells us (Brit. Birds, ii. 345) that in Eastern Europe it is compelled by the cold to migrate, some finding their way to Egypt, and therefore necessarily crossing the Ægean, or passing over Greece or the western coast of Asia Minor. I think it is a fair guess that those known to Aristotle were on their way from Thrace and Scythia to a warmer climate; and this hypothesis would explain not only their short stay, but their connection with the sea and harbours, and their mysterious character. Even supposing that a few haunted the Greek rivers at other times of the year, they would not be often seen there by a people not given either to sporting or to exploring out-of-the-way places; the one fact which would impress itself on the unscientific mind would be the sudden apparition in winter, and especially in mid-winter, of this little blue-green spirit about the harbours, and its as rapid disappearance.

If this be so, I think we have not far to seek for the origin of the two fables. Nothing being known of its nesting, it was assumed that it nested at or about the time when it appeared; and the not unfrequent calm and fine weather of mid-December would confirm the fancy, and give it a new mythical colouring. (The matter-of-fact philosopher does not of course allow that these fine days always occurred in his own experience; they are not always met, he says (v. 8. 3), in this country at the time of the solstice, “but they always occur in the Sicilian Sea.”) When this fable of the nesting-time had once established itself, it would be not very difficult to find a nest among the curiosities of the sea. So the little blue bird came to suffer “a sea-change, into something rich and strange,” through the careless fancy of the imaginative Greek.

Note D. Redpolls in the Alps. (p. 195.)

On page 49 of the first edition of this book there was a paragraph which described the shooting by Anderegg of a Lesser Redpoll (Linota rufescens) on the Engstlen Alp. The date was June 30 (1884), and I had little doubt that the bird (which was a female) was one of a pair which had been breeding there. And this idea was confirmed by the discovery of a nest in the same place by Anderegg in May of the present year (1886), which Mr. Scott Wilson, who was with him at the time, considered to belong to the Lesser Redpoll.

The form, however, of the Redpoll which is usually found in the Alps is that which is usually called ‘Mealy’ (Linota linaria); this has been reported by Mr. Seebohm as pretty frequent in the Engadine, and by Prof. Newton, on the authority of Colonel Ward, as having been abundant in Canton Vaud in the winter of 1874-5. All the Redpolls I saw last September were, to judge from size and colouring, of this form: so also were all that I have seen in Swiss museums marked as having been shot in the Alps. Believing therefore, on these grounds, and in deference to the arguments of the Rev. H. A. Macpherson, that both Mr. Scott Wilson and myself had made a mistake, I struck out the paragraph in question from my second edition.

Since doing so, however, I have paid a visit to Cambridge, where Prof. Newton pointed out to me a passage in Prof. Giglioli’s recently published catalogue of Italian birds bearing on the point. He writes without hesitation of Linota rufescens as occasionally breeding in the Italian Alps. This induces me to add this note to the present edition; for if it could be distinctly proved that L. rufescens is found breeding in the Alpine region, new light would be thrown, not only on the curious geographical distribution of this form, but on the abnormal character of the ornithology of the Alps. Prof. Giglioli may be himself mistaken, and as Anderegg and I failed to skin our bird, we cannot produce it as evidence; but my notes made while examining it point decidedly to L. rufescens rather than L. linaria, the length, for example, appearing as only four inches.