Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/91

 12, 1862.] localities, and by taking up their abode in rookeries they will not require to leave the places with which they may have become familiar.

Here is a thing worthy of note. The jackdaws inhabiting ruins and precipices do not, as a rule, mix with rooks or other birds, whereas those that reside in rookeries adopt the habits of rooks, and scour the fields promiscuously with them. They abstain from carrion, but otherwise they feed like rooks, and a fresh egg to breakfast is not uncommon with them. When about nightfall the long dangerous chains of rooks are sailing homewards, the short sharp “ca,” or, as the Scotch say, “the keckle o’ the kaes” is always distinguishable. The tree-nesting daws are also much shyer than their brethren of the ruins.

It is a common thing in Border towns and villages to see tamed daws stalking and flying about the streets. Some of these are taught to speak. We have heard one cry “Caller haddie!” as distinctly as if it had been a Newhaven fishwife. Boys also delight in moving about with jackdaws, like Zouave cats, perched on their shoulders.

An eccentric, gentle, and somewhat misanthropical man lived in Jedburgh toward the end of last century, whose only associate during the later years of his life was a jackdaw. For some years he was never seen without this bird, either flying after him along the streets or roads, or sitting near him when he remained stationary. The bird was killed by a thoughtless person, and after its death he never again appeared in his old haunts, and he died shortly afterwards. His tombstone was pointed out to us in Jedburgh churchyard. It is much decayed, and most of the letters are obliterated, but the following sentence may still be nearly all traced—and it was put there, we believe, at the dying request of the deceased:

The tamed daws are generally got from ruins or precipices, often at great personal risk. We recollect being lowered, when a boy, over a precipice 150 feet high in search of them. We had a rope fastened below our arm-pits, by which we were let down to the nests, from which we procured thirteen birds, and for which the three big boys who worked the rope handsomely allowed us one bird—the puniest in the lot. It was the nearest approach to the dance upon nothing we hope ever to have. But some boys think nothing of the descent, and would willingly be towed over the highest precipice for a penny.

The highest class of song-birds in the district we write of are the song-thrush, missel-thrush, blackbird, redbreast, whitethroat, grey linnet, green linnet, wren, willow-wren, goldfinch, bullfinch, and skylark. We have also heard the blackcap, and the woodlark is occasionally seen; but these two fine birds are rare.

Bullfinches have increased considerably in some localities within the last ten years, as have also the golden-crested wrens. Goldfinches, however, the prettiest of all British song-birds, have almost disappeared within the last twenty years. In some orchards we know, their nests were comparatively numerous twenty years ago, and now a nest is a rarity. With the aid of bird-lime and a good call-bird fanciers, still procure a bird now and then. But we predict that within a very few years this fine bird will not be found on the Borders.

All the ornithologists and general naturalists, English and Scotch, that we have read with reference to the fieldfare, class it as a bird of passage, that leaves these islands in spring and returns in autumn. Meyer, in his masterly work, says it is a native of the sombre forests of Europe, that it comes to Britain in November, and that “very few instances of the bird remaining to breed have been authenticated.” Knapp, one of the most correct of local observers, in his “Journal of a Naturalist,” says that he every year noticed a few fieldfares that had detached themselves from the main flock, and he adds, “I have reason to apprehend that these retreats are occasionally formed for the purpose of forming nests, though they are afterwards abandoned without incubation.”

Fieldfares are resident natives, however, in the Border counties, and schoolboys know their nests and eggs as well as they know those of the hedge-sparrow. We have known their nests from boyhood, an incident having occurred in our early years that made us ever afterwards know the nest of a fieldfare when we came upon it.

In a nesting season, when walking along the edge of a rugged glen, we noticed what we thought a nesting thrush dart off. We found the nest—a ground one—near the top of the precipice, and with difficulty reached it. It had young, well feathered, and as we were at the time on the look-out for a nest of thrushes, we at once bonnetted them. With some exultation we sped off to show our prize to an ornithological son of St. Crispin, who, like many of his fellow cobblers, was great on birds and politics; but our face fell as soon as we saw him look into our cap.

“Weel, my man,” said he, “what d’ye think ye’ve in your bonnet?”

“Mavises,” we timidly uttered.

“Mavises! Losh, man, to think I’ve spoken sae muckle about birds t’ye, an’ you no to ken the young anes o’ a feltie when ye see them,”—feltie being the local name for fieldfare.

A nesting season has seldom passed since our colloquy with the man of black thumbs in which we have not seen the nests of fieldfares, and we might have found them every year had we desired. We have handled the young birds by the side of the nests repeatedly, and, while doing so, have seen the alarmed parent birds flitting from tree to tree around us, uttering their low harsh “chir-r.” This single sound—we cannot call it a note—when alarmed, they repeat hurriedly. Strange, Bechstein says, their song consists of “a harsh, disagreeable warble.” There is more melody, and as much diversity, in the caw of the rook. But the young fieldfare (a percher) has, like a number of young birds, a sweet prolonged chirrup.

The fieldfare builds often in the main cleft