14 



Bird Notes and News 



Birds in the War Area. 



Bird notes from the Expeditionary Force 

 continue to appear in the papers, both 

 London and provincial. Prom British Head- 

 quarters in France a correspondent writes to 

 the Times (May 10th) of the bird-life in the 

 grounds of a deserted French chateau — 

 spinneys filled with warblers, and almost 

 every thicket holding its Nightingale or 

 Blackcap, Blackbirds, Thrushes, Wrens and 

 Robins even more plentiful than in an English 

 park, despite an Irish abimdance of Magpies 

 and Jays enough to break a gamekeeper's 

 heart. 



" But the chief discovery has been the 

 quaintest Treecreeper's nest, close by the 

 house, built not in a hole in the tree, but slung, 

 more like the nest of some sort of warbler, 

 among the leaves where two branches of the 

 tree are webbed together with ivy. . . . 

 Starlings and sparrows of course there are 

 here, for Starlings and sparrows are the two 

 creatures which conspicuously profit by the 

 war. Every house that is blowTi to bits by 

 shell-fire provides an endless choice of 

 fascinating nesting-places for sparrows among 

 the chinks of the ruined walls ; and never did 

 Starlings have such opportunity for un- 

 molested housekeeping as in the remains of 

 these poor battered chiu-ches. As for the 

 guns, they are to the birds, presumably, no 

 more than thimder, and when a shell falls 

 near it is only some new, if startling, natural 

 phenomenon." 



A later contribution (June 7th) on " Birds 



of a French Wood " says : — 



" No wood ever held more of the larger 

 percliing birds, Carrion Crows, Magpies and 

 Jackdaws and Jays, Woodpigeon and Stock- 

 dove and Turtle-dove, Green Woodpecker 

 and Hawk and Golden Oriole. Besides the 

 Kestrel and Sparrowhawk, there is some 

 other Hawk nesting there, a large bird, slate 

 grey, which slips away keen-winged through 

 the wood and later swings roimd and round 

 in endless circles, like a Kite or Buzzard, for 



hours together, high up in the sky. No one 

 here knows the splendid bird's name. . . . 

 The true lords of the wood are the Carrion 

 Crows, thick as Rooks in a rookery and as 

 talkative. Ordinarily one is likely to hear 

 no other note of a Crow, whether Carrion or 

 Hoodie, than the single raucous caw or the 

 triumphant rahk-rahk-rahk-rahk, from which 

 the Scandinavian peoples have borrowed the 

 finest battle-cry in the world. But here, 

 where the Crows are at home, one learns their 

 amazing conversational facility ; their profuse 

 vocabulary of clucks and groans and twang- 

 ings like the breaking of violin strings. . . 

 " The Orioles are of course the chief joy 

 of the wood. They are always in the same 

 small section. One has only to go there and 

 stand still for a while, and sooner or later the 

 beautiful flute-like liquid call comes ringing 

 from somewhere out of the green world above. 

 Then a brilliant meteor of yellow and black 

 flashes through a gap between the tree-tops, 

 and the liquid whistle which sounded on the 

 left hand is now on the right. Then it is 

 behind one, then in front ; and from some- 

 where inside the circle of sound one hears 

 the harsh wheezing answer of the hen bird. 

 The note of the hen Oriole is as ill-matched 

 to her lord's as is the croak of the hen 

 Nightingale." 



To the Nightingale there is a fine allusion 



in the late Mr. A. D Gillespie's published 



letters from Flanders : — 



" Presently a misty moon came up, and 

 a Nightingale began to sing . , , and it was 

 strange to stand there and listen, for the 

 song seemed to come all the more sweetly 

 and clearly in the quiet intervals between 

 the bursts of firing. There was something 

 infinitely sweet and sad about it, as if the 

 countryside were singing gently to itself, 

 in the midst of all our noise and confusion 

 and muddy work ; so that you felt the 

 Nightingale's song was the only real thing 

 which would remain when all the rest was 

 long past and forgotten. It is such an old 

 song too, handed on from Nightingale to 



