# The Zoologist/4th series, vol 3 (1899)/Issue 691/Original sketches of British birds, Davenport

part 1 of a series of three articles 'Original sketches of British birds'. This part published in: The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3, issues 691 (January, 1899), p. 1–17
THE ZOOLOGIST
No. 691.—January, 1899.
ORIGINAL SKETCHES OF BRITISH BIRDS.
By H.S. Davenport.
The Mistle-Thrush (Turdus viscivorus).
The song of the Mistle-Thrush has an indescribable charm for most lovers of birds, and, it may be added, not without reason. Heard at a time of the year when the afternoons are visibly lengthening out, and our thoughts are attuned to the coming of spring, the associations connected with it doubtless tend to a pleasing influence upon the listener apart from any actual merit contained in the song itself, which, to my mind, is considerable.
The melody, however, is somewhat curtailed, no matter whether poured forth in storm or in sunshine, with a distinct kind of curl in it, resembling not a little the wild notes of the Ring-Ouzel. I do not know if others have remarked this peculiarity in the song to which I have alluded, and which it is quite possible may be considered a very indifferent definition of what it is my wish to convey; nevertheless, this curious intonation, which I have attempted to describe by the term "curl," is distinctly present.
It has been stated with a show of authority that Mistle-Thrushes are not gregarious, but that they consort in families; the fact remains, however, that Mistle-Thrushes are to be seen associating in considerable numbers in the month of September every year. Now I must say at the outset that I am far from wishing to criticize the observations and experiences of others, ​when irreconcilable with my own, in a harsh or captious manner, for I am by no means insensible of the heavy debt ornithologists of every degree owe to the writings of their predecessors; nevertheless, the truth is, or should be, the common object of all who write sketches of bird-life.
Many a time in the spring of the year, when I have been waiting and watching in some plantation or wood in order to watch a Sparrow-Hawk to its selected nest, old nests of years gone by being in almost every tree, have I been indebted to the far less harmonious, not to say angry and objurgatory, notes of the Mistle-Thrush at a distance for warning to pull myself together and be on the alert; while a moment or so later, swiftly and silently winging its flight amidst the trees, has the special object of my ramble appeared, shooting up at last to its perch upon a branch, and remaining perfectly motionless while eventually affording me—provided my ambush had told no tales—the identical piece of information I was in want of. In defence of its nest the Mistle-Thrush is very courageous, but still more so in defence of its young when on the point of quitting it; I have observed some battles royal on the part of this bird with Rooks and Jackdaws, and, though successful on occasions in fraudulently appropriating the eggs, I have never seen the two species just mentioned actually capture the young.
I have good reasons for considering this bird a very early breeder. I have never detected its nest in abnormal situations, nor have I come across abnormal eggs, either as regards colour, shape, or size, as has been the case with sundry other birds; but a most singular instance respecting the nesting of this species came under my notice in the spring of 1883. In May of that year there were two Mistle-Thrushes' nests built low down in ornamental yew trees, within half a dozen yards of each other, opposite the hall-door of a country house in Leicestershire. Both nests contained eggs when I found them, and in each instance broods were successfully reared. Some few days after all the young ones had flown, I was rather surprised to notice an old bird again on one of the nests, and, on inspecting it, I was a great deal more surprised to find that it contained no fewer than nine eggs, five being of the type of those originally laid in it, and the remaining four evidently the property of the Mistle-Thrush ​that had built and utilized the nest in the adjoining tree. I took four of the nine eggs away, and the old bird incubated the remainder, and in the course of time brought forth a second brood. Meanwhile the other Mistle-Thrush had constructed a second nest a short distance off, and she too was successful in hatching out a second brood. I should add that the eggs in the two nests in the first instance presented very distinctive features, so the absolute accuracy of what I have related need not for one moment be called in question. The Curator of the Leicester Museum and others were acquainted with this interesting case at the time.
The year following (1884) only one nest was built; I found it on March 24th, some six weeks earlier than in 1883, when the two nests had been built in May, altogether a late date, except on the hypothesis that it was a case of second nesting, which seems probable. The nest was placed in pretty much the same spot in 1884; it contained seven eggs, all fresh, and an old bird was brooding them when I discovered it. Of the seven eggs, four were of one size, shape, and colouring, and three of another, and both lots corresponded with the character and were beyond all doubt referable to the two types of the eggs laid in the preceding year. It maybe hazardous to theorize on the subject, but I have a theory, and it is this—that the two hen birds shared a mate between them. In the one instance the eggs were small and round, while in the other they were rather elongated, the ground colour, moreover, as also the markings, varying with each type. Having kept specimens of each in 1883, I naturally compared them with those laid in 1884, and there can be no sort of doubt but that they were the produce of the same two birds.
With regard to this species, I do not remember having met with anything else in their economy or life-history that need be reproduced here. Their conspicuous nests, built early in the spring of the year, and containing, as a rule, four or five eggs, are known to most schoolboys; but when I come to deal with the Lapwing, I shall relate what I have every reason for believing was a second instance of a single male bird aiding and abetting the nidification of two females. Polygamy is natural to some species, but Mistle-Thrushes and Lapwings do not come within the category. Of course, I am far from contending that the accuracy ​of my theory is absolutely proven, though it satisfies my own convictions.
With the advance of summer, and after the young are fledged, the Mistle-Thrush's utterance is chiefly limited to a harsh monosyllabic note sounding like wark, repeated at intervals. People have often asked me what it was, and not always believed me when I have told them. Some have fancied it to be the croak of a Frog.
Without undue presumption, I think I may claim to have found a Mistle-Thrush's nest so charmingly situated as to have been simply peerless in the natural beauty of its immediate surroundings. A huge bunch of mistletoe hung for many years from one of the middle branches of a lofty poplar at the four cross-roads between Lucton School and Mortimer's Cross, in Herefordshire, and in the centre of this bunch a pair of Mistle-Thrushes one spring built their nest and reared their young. Subsequently an enterprising boy climbed the tree just previously to the Christmas holidays, and possessed himself of the mistletoe in its entirety, which doubtless he put to much less profitable use when it adorned the interior of his own home than had been the case with the striking-looking birds that had once employed it as a nesting site during the month of sunshine and showers.
There is a prevailing notion that Mistle-Thrushes are silent after April has run its course. This may be true of the majority, but one of the species most certainly sang to me almost daily during the first three weeks of May in 1894. There are, I may perhaps observe, many hard-and-fast notions about the history and economy of birds which are wholly erroneous, but which are possibly to be condoned from the fact that they are so often repeated, and therefore fostered, by so-called popular writers on Natural History. Original observations are what we want nowadays; how seldom, comparatively speaking, do we get them where birds are concerned!
The Song-Thrush (Turdus musicus).
Of so generally abundant and well-known a species throughout the British Islands I have not very much to say that has not been said scores of times already, and therefore my remarks on this delightful songster will be discreetly and advantageously ​curtailed. Its nest is to be found in varying and odd situations, and in the spring of 1894 I noticed, during a long visit to North Wales, chiefly for ornithological purposes, that a very favourite site for it was not only on but in banks. I was staying at Llanuwchllyn, a village prettily situated near the southern shore of Bala Lake, and it was almost impossible for anyone who possesses a keen eye for birds' nests to stroll along the charming lanes thereabouts without remarking those of Song-Thrushes so located. Children journeying to and from school twice a day along these lanes made sad havoc of all kinds of nests, but it struck me that the poor confiding Song-Thrushes fared the worst at their hands, not even excepting Blackbirds and Robin Redbreasts. The wantonness with which nests were torn from their picturesque sites, and the eggs flung broken on the ground, fairly made my blood boil on many an occasion; while I ascertained that the little girls were every whit as bad as the boys. If masters and mistresses of village schools throughout the kingdom—for I have little reason to doubt that the wantonness complained of is pretty general—would take upon themselves to impress on the youthful mind the cruelty involved in robbing birds' nests wholesale without any set or scientific purpose, and would further impress the moral by a little salutary correction on the youthful bodies of hardened offenders, the result would be far more conducive to the peace and happiness of the birds themselves, and infinitely less harrowing to the feelings of those who from a genuine and deep-rooted love of their subject make the avifauna of these islands the all-engrossing study of a lifetime.
That some such restrictions in the matter would not be without general and good effect is shown, I think, by a visit I once paid to the Bempton cliffs, on the Yorkshire coast—between Bridlington and Filey—in order to watch the gathering of the Common Guillemots' eggs, and make a selection of quaintly-marked and uncommon specimens for my own collection. On this occasion I was accompanied by my wife, who takes as keen a delight in birdsnesting as myself, and is wonderfully "smart" at finding eggs; and as we walked along the main road from Bempton station to the cliffs, we noticed several nests of different species, containing eggs, in most exposed situations, and were, moreover, not a little struck by the fact that the children we ​passed were busily engaged picking the wayside flowers. There is more in this than meets the eye, I thought; so we stopped and asked an intelligent-looking boy of apparently some eight or nine years of age if he or his companions ever meddled with the birds' nests. Quick as possible came back the answer, "Oh, no; we're not allowed to." And on further investigation I rejoiced to find that such was absolutely the case, the children in the village schools thereabouts being very rightly taught the cruelty of an indiscriminate and irrational destruction of birds' nests and eggs.
This species is an indefatigable songster, and probably if it were less frequently heard in our gardens and orchards, we should set greater store by its music—regard its varied and stirring notes with greater favour. I have heard it sing every month in the year at such times as the weather has been mild and open. I heard one give forth a few sweet notes at a quarter to eight on two consecutive mornings in the first week in January in the year 1888, and another bird sang almost every day in my garden throughout the November of 1893. As is the case with most of our feathered songsters, however, the weather plays an all-important part in the "to be or not to be" question of an open-air vernal concert; nevertheless, the Mistle-Thrush must be quoted as a notable exception to this rule, and as one not to be deterred by storms and gales from chanting its pleasing lay. Alike in fair weather and foul, and at its appointed season, the "Stormcock" raises its voice, perched aloft amidst the topmost branches—rather preferring, I have observed, to station itself in an isolated tree either by the roadside or in a hedgerow a field away for the purpose.
The Song-Thrush is a more or less migratory species; it pairs early in the spring, and the nest, which is quite unique, is placed in a variety of situations; but because I once discovered one on the ground in the Rectory plantation at Skeffington is not conceived an adequate reason for suggesting that that is one of its normal situations. We talk glibly enough about the absurdity of drawing conclusions from single instances, and yet I can never get out of my head reading in some book or other intended for the instruction of simple tyros like myself that Nuthatches' nests were to be looked for in haystacks! I can only ​presume it was thought that to this grotesquely aberrant situation for a Nuthatch's nest—the original of which, by-the-by, is to be seen in the South Kensington Museum—the Latin adage ex uno disce omnes would most fitly apply. Let all young ornithologists be on their guard against the tendency to generalize from a single and perhaps exceptional experience. Surely I have some memory of a man who once alleged he had shot a Hare at ninety yards, and who wrote proclaiming the feat in a well-known journal devoted to records of sport, and who argued therefrom that he could always kill Hares at ninety yards! Unless I am dreaming, the gentleman with the long bow was somewhat roughly handled by subsequent critics of both his feat and logic in the same journal. The writer once dropped a Grouse dead at ninety yards—a cross shot—that had been previously "peppered"; it was a precious fluke, a stray corn just chancing to penetrate the brain; but many another has been missed at a third of the distance since. It was on the beautiful Kildonan moors, in Sutherlandshire, that the shot was made and measured.
However, the Song-Thrush is my theme. With regard to its eggs, the only abnormal-sized varieties I have met with have invariably been on the small scale. I have also found them on rare occasions unspotted, and in one instance, in Herefordshire, I took a beautiful clutch of five with blood-red markings upon them. The characteristic nest of this species is too well known to need my making any reference to it.
The Redwing (Turdus iliacus).
For a close inspection and prolonged study of the Redwing there is hardly a period more suitable than that of frost and snow, especially when a heavy fall of the latter has covered the ground to the depth of several inches, and the grass of the green fields has been hidden from our view for many days. Then it is that the poor birds, with their normal food supply cut short, and pinched with cold and hunger, draw to the roadside hedges for the purpose of feeding on the winter berries which, in mild open weather, they apparently set less store by, except on first arrival. During a severe spell of weather I have gone close up to as many as ten or a dozen in a low bush, their attitude crouching and despondent, and they have shown neither fear nor inclination to ​be gone at my approach. There is some old saying to the effect that adversity makes strange bedfellows, and the truth of it occurred very forcibly to me when one morning a winter or so ago I found some Redwings collected in a thorn-bush by the roadside, sitting quite still, and apparently resigned to any fate that might overtake them. Noticing a dark and much larger-looking object in the same bush, and having my curiosity aroused, I went up to it, and discovered that their companion in misfortune was a Squirrel. The poor thing, tamed by hunger and cold, was as confiding as the Redwings, and seemed to be sharing their frugal fare of hips and haws.
I am of opinion, nevertheless, that this species is able to withstand the occasional severity of our winters much more readily than the Fieldfare, owing to its Thrush-like habit of frequenting, during hard frosts, hedgerow bottoms, and feeding on snails and the pupæ of Lepidoptera. Its haunts and habits somewhat resemble those of the latter bird, and it arrives in this country generally some few days in advance of its equally well-known congener. In the autumn of 1894 I saw and heard both species for the first time on the same afternoon, viz. October 15th. My attention was attracted to the Redwing by its familiar "wheet wheet" long before I perceived it, with a companion, perched aloft on the dead branch of a tree in a hedgerow. I oppose the doctrine that Redwings by nature are exclusively insectivorous, and only revert to berries as a last resource; on their arrival in this country they immediately set to work in small flocks on the hips and haws, though I admit that later in the year, in open weather, they may frequently be seen in the pastures feeding on worms and snails and other insects. They frequent the meadows by day, and towards the close of the afternoon, just as dusk is coming on, may be seen in little straggling parties repairing to the shelter of shrubberies and plantations, where they spend the night. The Redwing is easily distinguishable from the Song-Thrush by a broadish white stripe over the eye, in addition to which it is a bird of gregarious habits, which the other is not. As an article of food its flesh is considered very delicate —"better than the Fieldfare," I have heard a good judge of things edible declare; but this, of course, must be a matter of individual taste. Personally, I should say that a fat Blackbird in the ​autumnal months, well hung and not too long before the fire, would run them both very close.
Touching the vexed point of the Redwing nesting in this country, I am aware that it has been reported to have done so—indeed, on more than one occasion in my own county—but, though such may have been the case, it is quite out of the question that the mere ipse dixit of, it may be, an anonymous correspondent to some paper should be accepted as authoritative on the point. Actual and absolute proof of its nest and eggs having been obtained in this country has not yet been forthcoming, I fancy, and until the birds are killed at the nest and the eggs taken, ornithologists will do well to receive with the fullest reserve all affirmative statements that have hitherto appeared on the subject. It is very easy to make an assertion; it is another matter to prove it. The writer has frequently been girded at as being too particular in his wish for indisputable evidence on sundry points connected with birds, but he maintains that it is a subject on which one cannot possibly be too particular. Only consider for a moment what distinguished modern writers on ornithology have done with a mass of flimsy and unsupported evidence relative to the appearance of this or that rare species in this or that part of the kingdom: why, they have rejected it as utterly unreliable; and had only a proper test been applied in the first instance to communications of the kind, ancient books on the subject of birds would have contained far less fiction.
However, to return to the Redwing. I have had its eggs from Norway, and they much resemble small varieties of those of the Blackbird, the ground colour being almost entirely hidden by tiny streaks, which are evenly distributed over the whole surface. It has a sweet pleasing twittering kind of song as I have heard it, but I am not at all sure that I have heard the real thing, for the reason supplied by the quotation from 'A Spring and Summer in Lapland.' "An Old Bushman" writes:—"Of all the northern songsters, perhaps the Redwing stands first on the list, and is with justice called the northern Nightingale, for a sweeter song I never wish to listen to." This is enthusiastic writing, which I can appreciate without, I regret, being in a position to endorse. I can never have heard the Redwing at its best.
The Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris).
A bird of passage, and of more than common interest. It comes to our shores in the autumn and departs in the spring; and, though British nests and eggs have been reported as taken, I believe the gravest doubt encircles all such statements. I have special reasons for remembering this bird, and I will relate why. On two occasions I have publicly recorded observations of its existence in this country at what were deemed unusual dates, and on both occasions my communications were as publicly called in question, and it was insinuated that I had blundered in my identification,—in short, had mistaken the Mistle-Thrush for the Fieldfare. That such errors are of frequent occurrence with those who do not make birds a particular study is, I freely admit, beyond question, and consequently there is no reason really why an obscure ornithologist like myself should feel hurt at the suggestion of such lamentable ignorance. All the same, the fact remains that in my own estimation I am just as likely to confuse the two species as any two letters of the alphabet.
In the first case: in 'The Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland' I recorded a Fieldfare's exceptionally early appearance at Lowesby on Sept. 2nd, 1877,—it should have been printed 1878,—and I am at liberty here to amplify this brief notice with a few details, though I would first like to point out that in Mr. J.E. Harting's edition of 'The Natural History of Selborne' there is reference to a Fieldfare shot in a garden near Kirby Muxloe, in Leicestershire, on July 29th, 1864, and forwarded to the editor of 'The Field' for examination. It had been observed about the garden all the summer.
With regard to the Fieldfare seen at Lowesby, however, I remember the occasion distinctly. A cheery companion and friend—alas! long gone from these scenes—and myself had just started out shooting, and we had only got a little distance beyond the plantations that fringe the lower side of the Hall, when my attention was suddenly arrested by a kind of chuckle with which I am infinitely more familiar in mid-winter than during the opening days of Partridge-shooting. The chuckle was repeated more than once, and in a twinkling I descried a Fieldfare perched high up in a lofty tree. I tried to stalk the bird, but it was far ​too wary for me, and just as it took wing, it again uttered that well-known laughing cackle, somewhat more briskly this time, which I have noticed is a common habit of the species on the moment of taking flight. I admit that I was "let down," so to say, very courteously in 'The Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland,' but there is no getting away from the fact that my note therein is immediately followed by a reference to the Mistle-Thrush being frequently mistaken by sportsmen for an early arrival of the Fieldfare, so I can draw my own conclusions.
In the second case, I wrote as follows to 'The Field': "On the afternoon of Oct. 3rd I heard, saw, and could have shot (as the one closely pursued the other) two Fieldfares"; and the Editor appended the following note: "Although it would not be exceptionally early for Fieldfares to arrive, the action described points with more probability to the birds in question being Mistle-Thrushes, and the more so because there were only two of them instead of a small flock." This was rebuff number two.
The latest date I recollect seeing Fieldfares staying in this country was on May 12th, 1879. On that morning I walked within gunshot of a cluster of five which were winging their way northwards, and had settled for a few moments on the top of a lofty poplar. With regard to the bird seen on Sept. 2nd, 1878, was it a pioneer of others to follow, or was it one that had been wounded and passed the summer with us? At all events, there seemed nothing wrong with its flight or general appearance when I was gazing at it.
I have found this species roosting in tall thick hedges, but generally on the ground, and frequently in the furrows in the open fields, for I have two or three times walked nearly on to the top of them after 10 p.m. on dark nights; they cannot even then resist a chuckle when thus disturbed. I think, though, the more common roosting-place is on the ground in small woods and plantations, and, after wheeling about for some time in a flock, first alighting on one tall tree and then taking a flight and settling on another, they will finally descend on the point of dusk to the lower trees,—ash-pole spinneys being especially favoured haunts at this hour. After resting for a few moments in the branches, the birds drop silently down in quick succession to the ​shelter and concealment afforded by the brushwood and undergrowth, and so bivouac for the night. I have been reminded that Mr. Seebohm, in a most delightful chapter on the Fieldfare, writes:—"Instances are alleged of these birds having been flushed from the stubbles or the pastures at dusk; but this is the Fieldfare's feeding-hour; and if shrubberies be near at hand, it is there they spend the night." This is a decided expression of opinion, and comes from a great authority; but though Fieldfares may feed at dusk, a statement I venture to question, I doubt their doing so between the hours of ten and eleven at night, at which time, I repeat, I have often disturbed them from the open grass fields.
Nevertheless, it is one thing to detect the slips and question the statements of previous writers, to whom we all owe so much; quite another to write a book; and I can only trust that any criticisms of mine, wherever they may appear, will not be regarded as written in a captious, cavilling spirit. I am too well aware that many of my predecessors, in whose footsteps I am humbly and laboriously treading, have forgotten more than I can ever hope to know.
It is, of course, notorious that this species frequently breeds in large colonies. I have had its eggs from Norway, and was much struck by their resemblance to plain as well as handsome eggs of the Blackbird and the Ring-Ousel, with which, I should imagine, they may very easily be confounded at times by even expert oologists. Fieldfares have little knowledge of economy, otherwise they would better husband their resources in the matter of food supply. They will strip bushes of hips and haws in open weather when an insectivorous diet would prove equally sustaining, and then when a spell of frost and snow is over the country and there is nothing to be extracted from the fields, the produce of the hedges which has been prematurely attacked is liable to run short.
I have dwelt at some length on this species, as it is both well-known and a favourite. In short, what the Swallow is to the spring, the Fieldfare is to the autumn,—they each in turn serve to mark an epoch in time's revolving wheel.
The Blackbird (Turdus merula).
As a songster this species stands high in my regard, and, though the statement may be treated as open to question, I am not at all sure that every lover of birds is able to discriminate between its notes and those of the Song-Thrush. This, however, by the way. It breeds early in the spring, and yet in actual priority of date yields, to my thinking, to such well-known birds as the Mistle-Thrush, Song-Thrush, Long-tailed Tit, and one or two others. At all events, though there may be very little in it,—a distinction without much of a difference, perhaps,—I have noticed that the earliest nests which meet my eye as year succeeds year are never those of the Blackbird.
It would be superfluous to waste time on a discussion of the nidification of so common a species, for its nest and eggs fall an easy prey to every roving lad, while, in addition, there is scarcely a book on the birds of these islands which does not thoroughly deal with the question. Though the sites chosen for building purposes exhibit an infinite and varied assortment, there is an uniformity about the eggs which is sadly disappointing to the ornithologist, always on the look-out for abnormal coloured specimens. Nevertheless, I have on occasions taken some most richly-marked eggs, approximating to the handsomest type of those of the Ring-Ousel; and in two consecutive years at the same spot in the same hedge I found nests containing five and four eggs respectively, the bold markings of which I have never seen equalled, certainly not surpassed. I mention this case, however, as much with a view of drawing attention to how addicted most birds are to repairing year after year to the same haunts for rearing their young, as to show how the particular type of an egg laid by any species may be pretty confidently looked for again. Because I quote only a single instance, I am not generalising from it alone; I have had proof in plenty of what I say.
The unspotted variety of egg is, I believe, not uncommon, though I have only once met with it, and that was near to Mortimer's Cross, in Herefordshire, in the year 1888. The bird was on the nest, which was placed in a thorn-bush on the brink of the river Lugg; it contained four fresh eggs of a pale apple​green colour, which I transferred without a pang to my collection, and which are frequently pointed at as "Starling's" when the contents of my cabinet are on view to friends and acquaintances. I believe it was Pope who wrote "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," and I shall make bold to add, "especially where birds' eggs are concerned." My ill-success in not meeting with more specimens of this unspotted variety does not arise from slackness or laziness, as I never pass a Blackbird's nest without inspecting its contents. Boys who meditate purchasing the eggs of Fieldfares and Ring-Ousels will do well to be on their guard, as they bear a strong family likeness to those of the species under discussion.
Blackbirds are somewhat prone to rearing a second brood in the same nest, and I have known less than a week elapse between the departure of the young and the laying of fresh eggs. In the spring of 1883 a pair of these birds possessed themselves of a vacated Mistle-Thrush's nest for their second brood, and brought them off successfully. The earliest recorded date I have of an egg is March 16th, 1885.
Pied varieties are occasionally met with; my youngest brother shot a lovely bird at Plumtree, near Nottingham, the black and white feathers being most evenly apportioned. But, in this connection, it was my own star that was destined to be in the ascendant on Oct. 19th, 1893, on which date I was staying with my friend Captain Quintin Dick at Hinton St. George, in Somersetshire, he having taken Lord Poulett's extensive shootings thereabout on a lease. A strong contingent of us had just commenced warfare on the Partridges in a large field of turnips, when I espied a white bird skimming away over the tops of them in front of the "gun" on my left, who happened to be my host. I heard him say sharply to one of the keepers, "What the deuce is that?"; and, though simultaneously I fairly screamed "Shoot, shoot!" the bird was quickly out of range, and the responsive "bang, bang," came too late to be effective. As luck would have it, however, there were a brace of birds not picked when, we reached the boundary hedge, for the turnips were of tremendous growth, and, as some little delay appeared inevitable, Capt. Dick very goodnaturedly let me go off in pursuit of this rara avis, an under-keeper accompanying me, as apparently my only chance of ​securing a shot was to lie in ambush, and have it driven towards me. For half an hour it led us a pretty dance, and we repeatedly had to change our tactics; and, though I felt I did not want to set eyes on another Partridge until I had "bagged" my own particular bird, I must confess to feeling considerable qualms of conscience all the time as to what the rest of the "guns" would think of my desertion and apparent wild-goose—alias, white blackbird—chase. However, the end occasionally justifies the means, as it did in this instance; for, just as I was on the point of abandoning the pursuit as hopeless, the bird proving as averse to being driven as stalked, I chanced a snap-shot at what at the moment of firing I thought quite a prohibitive range, and down it came,—a prodigious fluke, yes, I freely admit,—a stray corn having severed its pinion-bone, and probably not another gone near it. A more beautiful bird of the kind I have never seen, and, though a similar specimen in the South Kensington Museum runs it hard, I prefer the one I was lucky enough to kill at Hinton St. George.
It is possible that someone or other will be found to blame me for what I have recorded in the light rather of a triumph—I deemed it one on the spur of the moment; but, though highly disapproving of the indiscriminate and senseless slaughter of rare species that might breed in greater numbers with us if left unmolested, I do not see that the capture of an abnormal-coloured Blackbird deserves reprobation, and especially when it was a marked bird, and the hand of almost every dweller in the district was against it. Indeed, considering the persecution it underwent, the wonder to me is that it managed to escape its doom for such a lengthened period. Had it been one of a pair of Golden Orioles nesting in the spring of the year in Kent, let us say, my action would have been most properly denounced as reprehensible in the highest degree. It is not after this manner, I have presence of mind enough to know, that the cause of Natural History is best aided. However, it is far from my intention to offer an elaborate apology for what I did, and should probably do again to-morrow if I had the opportunity; "collectors never know remorse, and seldom feel regret," and I am quite sure all my plunderings have not done one ten-thousandth part of the damage which a contrary wind inflicts at migration time.
​The keeper on whose beat the white Blackbird was shot assured me that he had never seen it with a mate, and that he did not believe it had nested during the two years he had noticed it about the district. Such evidence as this is, of course, not conclusive on the point, though I think it extremely probable that his conjecture was right. Had it paired and assisted in the rearing of a brood, surely some of the young would have been abnormally marked, and, in this case, he would have observed them on his daily rounds. A young and intelligent gamekeeper would let very little escape his eye.
A word about pied Blackbirds, which, to my mind, are more subject to variations of plumage than any other species. I have seen it stated—I cannot say where, for I read pages and pages on the subject of birds almost daily—that the white feathers turn in time to black, and that even in the case of albinos nature in due course resumes her sway; the argument being that, if such were not the case, we should be continually meeting with abnormal-coloured species. Again, some other writer has recorded his conviction that albinos never revert to the normal plumage, and that natural white feathers always remain white; but that when resulting from disease they will resume the proper colours at the moulting period. The cause of preternatural plumage in birds need not be gone into here, but my impression is—once white or pied, almost always white or pied; while I view with some little incredulity the contention that disease is accountable for some of our pied birds, and that when they resume their normal health they also resume their ordinary plumage. What evidence is there in support of this? Surely it is more or less assumption? It is impossible to decide offhand about disease in a bird, especially when it is at large; while the few pied Blackbirds I have known kept in cages have never reverted to the normal colouring after moulting, although I have heard tell of an instance or two to the contrary. Of course, the obvious retort to this would be that none of them owed their white feathers to disease. So be it.
I have on a few occasions found six eggs in nests of this species, but five and four are more commonly met with, while it is quite the exception for a clutch to be represented by less than the last-named number.
​There is one feature in the life-history of the Blackbird on which I have not commented, but to which I should like to just cursorily allude before bringing this particular sketch to a close. I refer to a tendency on the part of individual birds to indulge in mimicry; and though it has been very seldom indeed that I have without shadow of misgiving detected one uttering notes that were alien to the species, I met with a very noteworthy instance—quite recently in the Bala district—of a Blackbird copying the notes of a Curlew. The imitator sang from the same eminence on several consecutive afternoons during the month of May in 1895, and, though the reproduction of the borrowed tones was not so true to the original as that essayed by many a Starling in the same locality, it was impossible to close one's ears to the fact that for once in a way I had made the acquaintance of a Blackbird that not only took delight in mimicry, but modelled its refrain on the lines of that of which it had almost daily experience.
It may well be that the tuneful lay of the Blackbird is commenced at different seasons in different parts of the country,—I mean that the species will probably be heard in full song some days earlier in the spring of the year in a southern county like Hampshire, for instance, than in the more northerly regions of the British Islands. Considerations of this kind may not unnaturally be held to detract from the value of any given date respecting the first heard song of any particular species; but, as a comparative guide to my brother field-naturalists who take pleasure in noting the humblest details where birds are concerned, I may incidentally observe that I have never heard the Blackbird at the zenith of his musical powers in Leicestershire previously to February 20th, nor, I may add, the Chaffinch previously to February 19th. In this connection, however, much will obviously depend on the atmospheric conditions prevailing from year to year.
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