Bird Notes and News 



15 



Nightingale through the summer nights of 

 so many umumerable years." 



Dr. Eastwick Field kindly sends for pub- 

 lication in Bird Notes avd News the following 

 notes on birds from Mr. W. Waldegrave Little, 

 of the R. A.M.C. , serving in Northern France. 



" It was kind of you to think of sending 

 me Bird Notes, which I read with much 

 interest. There was an article in the Times 

 recently on ' Birds at the Front,' from the 

 same contributor I think. He discusses the 

 reasons why the birds take so little notice of 

 gun fire and bursting of shells, saying they 

 seem to treat it like thunder, as a loud noise 

 which does them no harm. It must be so. 



" Last spring it was discussed in the 

 Times whether the demon of war would diive 

 the birds away, and I agreed with the writer 

 that it would not. It was interesting that 

 I heard the first Nightingale while in my bed 

 on the tailboard of a motor-loi-ry, in a corn- 

 field, while I lay listening to monster shells 

 bursting in a town eight miles back from the 

 firing-line. This year it was in a roofless 

 village and close to a noisy field-gun that 

 I heard the first Nightingale ; but they are 

 nothing like as common in this part of France 

 as they were in Belgium last year. 



" I have moved about in this part a good 

 deal this year. Much of it is very charming, 

 with plenty of woodland, but there are not 

 as many birds as there would be in a similar 

 part of England. Unfortunately there are 

 many of the warblers whose notes I do not 

 know, but I have heard at the same time 

 Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Nightingale, and what 

 I think must have been the Grasshopper 

 Warbler (a long drawn-out note just like a 

 grasshopper). Chiflfchaffs, Garden Warblers 

 and Blackcaps are very plentiful, but I have 

 never heard a Willow- Wren. Whitethroats 

 I cannot identify by their song, but I have 

 looked for their nests in likely places and 

 never found them. I have never seen a 

 Peewit since I landed. Jays we have, and 

 Green Woodpeckers, and Magpies any num- 

 ber, Jackdaws, Crows and Rooks and a great 

 number of Chaffinches which seem to have 

 a better song than in England. 



" Three birds still baffle me. One that 

 hides in the fields and says ' Wit-wit-it ' ; 

 one that pipes in the trees with fiuty notes 

 like a Blackbird just beginning, and says 

 ' Oriol-ole ' nothing more. I think I saw it 

 once, about the size of a Cuckoo. The other 

 is the one that calls at night like a big frog. 



" Butterflies are not as plentiful as they 

 would be if this were England. . . . But, of 

 coiu'se, all the coimtry that I have seen is very 

 tame compared with what I hope we shall 

 see before long. I could place nearly all of 

 it in the southern counties of England. For 

 instance, you may get a bank of chalk rising 

 out of the clayey soil, and immediately you 

 have the little junipers and orchis and all 

 the other things, gorse, broom, etc., that 

 grow on the chalky slopes round Warlingham. 

 The same bird's nest ; Yellowhammer and 

 Tree Pipit I met with too. 



" I get plenty of opportunities of seeing 

 the country, having continually to walk from 

 one village to another, and my nature studies 

 are a great relaxation from a life that would 

 otherwise be very monotonous. I carmot 

 say I like this perpetual hedgeless landscape, 

 with all the villages completely hidden by 

 trees." 



An artillery officer, whose letter is quoted 

 in the Spectator, writes : 



" The Starlings out here have acquired the 

 trick of giving three shrill taxi whistles, in 

 imitation of the call for enemy aeroplanes. 

 It is great fun to see everyone diving for 

 cover ; I was nearly taken in myself the 

 other day." 



With regard to the little warbler noted by 

 a soldier-ornithologist in Gallipoli, to which 

 the name of " Firetail " had been given, and 

 which was identified by correspondents of 

 the Observer with the Redstart, Mr. Ogilvie- 

 Grant writes : " The Gallipoli ' Firetail ' 

 probably, almost certainly, refers to the 

 Grey-backed Warbler [Agrohates familiaris), 

 the Eastern form of the Rufous Warbler 

 {A. galactodes)." 



