Aileen Aroon, A Memoir

Chapter Fourteen.

The Redstart, the Goldfinch, the Mavis, and Merle

I was creeping, crawling, and scrambling one afternoon in the days of my boyhood, through tall furze at the foot of the Drummond Hill, which in England would be called a mountain. It was the Saturday half-holiday, and I was having a fine time of it among the birds. I was quite a mile away from any human dwelling, and, I flattered myself, from any human being either. I was speedily undeceived though. “Come out o’ there, youngster,” cried a terrible voice, almost to my ear. “I thought ye were a rabbit; I was just going to chuck a stone at your head.”

I crept forth in fear and trembling.

A city rough of the lowest type – you could tell that from the texture of the ragged, second-hand garments he wore; from his slipshod feet, his horrid cap of greasy fur, and pale, unwholesome face.

He proceeded to hoist a leafless branch, smeared with birdlime, in a conspicuous place, and not far off he deposited a cage, with a bird in it. Then he addressed me.

“I’m goin’ away for half an hour, and you’ll stop here and watch. If any birds get caught on the twigs, when I come back I’ll mebbe gie you something.”

When he came back he did “gie me something.” He boxed my ears soundly, because I lay beside the cage, and talked to the little bird all the time instead of watching.

You may guess how I loved that man. I have had the same amount of affection for the whole bird-catching fraternity ever since, and I do a deal every summer to spoil their sport. I look upon them as followers of a most sinful calling, and just as cruel and merciless as the slave-traders of Southern Africa. Many a little heart they break; they separate parent birds, and tear the old from their young, who are left to starve to death in the nest.

The redstart was a great favourite with me in these joyous days. In size and shape he is not unlike the robin; but the bill is black, the forehead white, the rest of the upper part of the body a bluish grey. The wings are brownish, the bird wears a bib of black, but on the upper portion of the chest and all down the sides there is red, though not so bright in colour as the robin’s breast. That is the plumage of the cock-bird, so these birds are easily known. They make charming cage pets, being very affectionate, and as merry as a maiden on May morning, always singing and gay, and so tame that you need not be afraid to let them out of the cage.

Another was the wren. Some would love the mite for pity sake. It is very pretty and very gay, and possesses a sweet little voice of its own; it needs care, however. It must not, on the one hand, be kept too near a fire or in too warm a room, and on the other it should be well covered up at night; a draught is fatal to such a bird. There is also the golden-headed wren, the smallest of our British birds, but I do not remember ever having seen one kept in a cage. There is no accounting for tastes, however. I knew a young lady in Aberdeen who kept a golden eagle in a cage of huge dimensions. He was the admiration of all beholders, and the terror of inquisitive schoolboys, who, myself among the number, fully believed he ate a whole horse every week, and ever so many chickens. While gazing at the bird, you could not help feeling thankful you were on the outside of the cage. I admired, but I did not love him much. He caught me by the arm one day, with true Masonic grip – I loved him even less after that.

Wrens are fed in the same way as robins or nightingales are. In the wild state they build a large roundish nest, principally of green moss outside, and with very little lining. There is just one tiny hole left in the side capable of admitting two fingers. Eggs about ten in number, very small, white, and delicately ticked with red. If I remember rightly, the golden wren’s are pure white. The nests I have found were in bushes, holly, fir, or furze, or under the branches of large trees close to the trunk. The back of the nest is nearly always towards the north and east.

The stonechat or stone-checker is a nice bird as to looks, but possesses but little song. It would require the same treatment in cage or aviary as the robin. So I believe would the whinchat, but I have no practical knowledge of either as pets.

With the exception of the kingfisher, I do not recollect any British bird with brighter or more charming plumage, than our friend the goldfinch. He is arrayed in crimson and gold, black, white, and brown, but the colours are so beautifully placed and blended, that, rich and gaudy though they be, they cannot but please the eye of the most artistic. The song of the goldfinch is very sweet, he is with all a most affectionate pet, and exceedingly clever, so much so that he may be taught quite a number of so-called tricks.

In the wild state the bird eats a variety of seeds of various weeds that grow by the wayside, and at times in the garden of the sluggard. Dandelion and groundsel seed are the chief of these, and later on in the season thistle seed. So fond, indeed, is the goldfinch of the thistle that the only wonder is that our neighbours beyond the Tweed do not claim it as one of the birds of Bonnie Scotland, as they do the curlew and the golden eagle. But, on the other hand, they might on the same plea claim a certain quadruped, whose length of ear exceeds its breadth of intellect.

“Won’t you tell us something,” said Ida, “about the blackbird and thrush? Were they not pets of your boyhood?”

“They were, dear, and if I once begin talking about them I will hardly finish to-night.”

“But just a word or two about them.”

It is the poet Mortimer Collins that says so charmingly:

Whether in Scotland or England, the mavis, or thrush, is one of the especial favourites of the pastoral poet and lyrist. And well the bird deserves to be. No sweeter song than his awakes the echoes of woodland or glen. It is shrill, piping, musical. Tannahill says he “gars (makes) echo ring frae tree to tree.” That is precisely what the charming songster does do. It is a bold, clear, ringing song that tells of the love and joy at the birdie’s heart. If that joy could not find expression in song, the bird would pine and die, as it does when caught, caged, and improperly treated. When singing he likes to perch himself among the topmost branches; he likes to see well about him, and perhaps the beauties he sees around him tend to make him sing all the more blithely. But though seeing, he is not so easily seen. I often come to the door of my garden study and say to myself, “Where can the bird be to-night?” This, however, is when the foliage is on orchard and oaks. But his voice sometimes sounds so close to my ear that I am quite surprised when I find him singing among the boughs of a somewhat distant tree. This is my mavis, my particular mavis. In summer he awakes me with his wild lilts, long ere it is time to get up, and he continues his song “till the star of evening climbs the grey-blue East,” and sometimes for an hour or more after that. I think, indeed, that he likes the gloaming best, for by that witching time nearly all the other birds have retired, and there is nothing to interrupt him.

In winter my mavis sings whenever the weather is mild and the grass is visible. But he does not think of turning up of a morning until the sun does, and he retires much earlier. I have known my mavis now nearly two years, and I think he knows me. But how, you may ask me, Frank, do I know that it is the selfsame bird. I reply that not only do we, the members of my own family, know this mavis, but those of some of my neighbours as well, and in this way: all thrushes have certain expressions of their own, which, having once made use of, they never lose. So like are these to human words, that several people hearing them at the same time construe them in precisely the same way. My mavis has four of these in his vocabulary, with which he constantly interlards his song, or rather songs. They form the choruses, as it were, of his vocal performances. The chorus of one is, “Weeda, weeda, weeda;” of another, “Piece o’ cake, piece o’ cake, piece o’ cake;” of the third, “Earwig, earwig, earwig;” and of the last, sung in a most plaintive key, “Pretty deah, pretty deah, pretty deah.”

“That is so true,” said Ida, laughing.

On frosty days he does not sing, but he will hop suddenly down in front of me while I am feeding the Newfoundlands.

“You can spare a crumb,” he says, speaking with his bright eye; “grubs are scarce, and my poor toes are nearly frozen off.”

Says the great lyrist —

I am lingering longer with the mavis than probably I ought, simply because I want you all to love the bird as I love him. Well, then, I have tried to depict him to you as he is in his native wilds; but see him now at some bud-seller’s door in town. Look at his drooping wings and his sadly neglected cage. His eyes seem to plead with each passer-by.

“Won’t you take me out of here?” he seems to say, “nor you, nor you? Oh! if you would, and were kind to me, I should sing songs to you that would make the green woods rise up before you like scenery in a beautiful dream.”

The male thrush is the songster, the female remains mute. She listens. The plumage is less different than in most birds. The male looks more pert and saucy, if that is any guide.

The mavis is imitative of the songs of other birds. In Scotland they say he mocks them. I do not think that is the case, but I know that about a week after the nightingales arrive here my mavis begins to adopt many of their notes, which he loses again when Philomel becomes mute. And I shouldn’t think that even my mavis would dare to mock the nightingale.

I have found the nest of the mavis principally in young spruce-trees or tall furze in Scotland, and in England in thick hedges and close-leaved bushes; it is built, of moss, grass, and twigs, and clay-lined. Eggs, four or five, a bluish-green colour with black spots. The missel-thrush, or Highland magpie, builds far beyond any one’s reach, high up in the fork of a tree; the eggs are very lovely – whitish, speckled with brown and red. I do not recommend this bird as a pet. He is too wild.

The merle, or blackbird, frequents the same localities as the mavis does, and is by no means a shy bird even in the wild state, though I imagine he is of a quieter and more affectionate disposition. It is my impression that he does not go so far away from the nest of his pretty mate as the mavis, but then, perhaps, if he did he would not be heard. The song is even sweeter to the ear than that of the thrush, although it has far fewer notes. It is quieter, more rich and full, more mellow and melodious. The blackbird has been talked of as “fluting in the grove.” The notes are certainly not like those of the flute. They are cut or “tongued” notes like those of the clarionet.

Chapter Fifteen.

A Bird-Haunted Churchyard

It is usual in the far north of Scotland, where the writer was reared, to have, as in England, the graveyard surrounding the parish church. The custom is a very ancient and a very beautiful one; life’s fitful fever past and gone, to rest under the soft sward, and under the shadow of the church where one gleaned spiritual guidance. There is something in the very idea of this which tends to dispel much of the gloom of death, and cast a halo round the tomb itself.

But at the very door of the old church of N – a tragedy had, years before I had opened my eyes in life, been enacted, and since that day service had never again been conducted within its walls. The new church was built on an open site quite a mile from the old, which latter stands all by itself – crumbling ivy-clad ruins, in the midst of the greenery of an acre of ancient graves. There is a high wall around it, and giant ash and plane trees in summer almost hide it from view. It is a solitary spot, and on moonlit nights in winter, although the highway skirts it, few there be who care to pass that way. The parish school or academy is situated some quarter of a mile from the auld kirkyard, and in the days of my boyhood even bird-nesting boys seldom, if ever, visited the place. It was not considered “canny.” For me, however, the spot had a peculiar charm. It was so quiet, so retired, and haunted, not with ghosts, but with birds, and many a long sunny forenoon did I spend wandering about in it, or reclining on the grass with my Virgil or Horace in hand – poets, by the way, who can only be thoroughly enjoyed out of doors in the country.

A pair of owls built in this auld kirkyard for years. I used to think they were always the same old pair, who, year after year, stuck to the same old spot, sending their young ones away to the neighbouring woods to begin life on their own account as soon as they were able to fly. They were lazy birds; for two whole years they never built a nest of their own, but took possession of a magpie’s old one. But at last the lady owl said to her lord —

“My lord, this nest is getting quite disreputable – we must have a new one this spring.”

“Very well,” said his lordship, looking terribly learned, “but you’ll have to build it, my lady, for I’ve got to think, and think, you know.”

“To be sure, my lord,” said she. “The world would never go on unless you thought, and thought.”

She chose an old window embrasure, and, half hid in ivy, there she built the new nest with weeds and sticks and stubble, while he did nothing but sit and talk Greek and natural philosophy at her.

There were tree sparrows built in the ivy of those crumbling walls, each nest about as big as the bottom of an armchair, and containing as many feathers as would stuff a small pillow-case, to say nothing of threads of all colours, hair, and pieces of printed paper. Seven, eight, and ten eggs would be in some of those, white as to ground, and beautifully speckled with brown and grey.

I have heard the tree sparrow called a nasty, common, dowdy thing. It really is not at all dowdy, and although it may be called the country cousin of the busy, chattering little morsel of feathers and fluff that hops nimbly but noisily about our roof-tops, and is constantly quarrelling with its neighbours, the tree sparrow is far more pretty. Nor is it quite plebeian. It is the Passer montanus of some naturalists, the becfin friquet of the French; it belongs to the Greek family, the Fringillidae, and does not the linnet belong to that family too? Yes, and the beautiful bullfinch and the gaudy goldfinch as well, to say nothing of the siskin and canary, so it cannot be plebeian. The tree sparrow makes a nice wee pet, very loving and gentle, and not at all particular as to food. It likes canary-seed, but insects and worms as well, and it is not shy at picking a morsel of sugar, nor a tiny bit of bread and butter.

There were more birds of the same family that haunted this auld kirkyard. The greenfinch or green-grosbeak used to flit hither and thither among the ivy like a tiny streak of lightning, and the pretty wee redpole was also there.

There was one bird in particular that used to build in the trees that grew inside the graveyard wall. I refer to my old friend and favourite the chaffinch, called in Scotland the boldie. He is most brilliant in plumage, being richly clad in russet red and brown, picked out with blue, yellow, and white. The chaffinch is lovely whether sitting or flying, whether trilling his song with head erect and throat puffed out, or keeking down from the branch of a tree with one saucy eye, to see if any one is going near his nest. His song in the wild state is more celebrated for brilliancy and boldness than for sweetness or variation, but in confinement it may be improved.

But this same nest is something to look at and admire for minutes at a time. I used to think my chaffinch – the chaffinch that built in my churchyard – was particularly proud of his nest.

“Pink, pink, pink,” he used to say to me; “I see you looking up at my nest. You may go up, if you like, and have a look in. She is from home just now, and there are four eggs in at present. There will be five by-and-by. Now, did you ever see such beautiful eggs?”

“Never,” I would reply; “they are most lovely.”

“Well, then,” he would continue, “pink, pink, pink! look at the nest itself. What do you think of that for architecture? It is built, you see, some twelve feet from the ground, against the stem, but held in its place by a little branch. It is out of the reach of cats; if it were higher up the wind would shake it, or the hawks would see it. It is not much bigger than your two hands; and just look at the artistic way in which the lichens are mingled with the moss on the outside, to blend with the colour of the tree!”

“Yes, but,” I would remark, “there are bits of paper there, as well as lichens.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the bird would reply; “bits of paper do almost as well as lichens. Pink, pink, pink! There is the whole of Lord Palmerston’s speech there; Palmerston is a clever man, but he couldn’t build a nest like that.”

I mentioned the redpole. It is, as far as beauty goes, one of the best cage-birds we have; a modest, wee, affectionate, unassuming pet, but deficient in song.

“Cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, chee-ee!” What sweet little voice is that repeating the same soft song over and over again, and dwelling on the last syllable with long-drawn cadence? The music – for music it is, although a song without variations – is coming from yonder bonnie bush of golden-blossomed broom, that grows in the angle between the two walls in a remote corner of the auld kirkyard. I throw Horace down, and get up from the grass and walk towards it.

“Chick, chick, chick, chick, chee-ee!”

“Oh, yes! I daresay you haven’t a nest anywhere near; but I know better.” This is my reply.

I walk across the unhallowed ground, as this patch is called, for – whisper it! – suicides lie here, and the graves have not been raised, nor do stones mark the spot where they lie.

Here is the nest, in under a bit of weedy bank, and yonder is the bird himself – the yellow-hammer, skite, or yellow bunting – looking as gay as a hornet, for well he knows that I will not disturb his treasures. The eggs are shapely, white in ground, and beautifully streaked and speckled, and splashed with reddish brown. But there are no eggs; only four morsels of yellow fluff, apparently, surrounded by four gaping orange-red mouths. But they are cosy. I catch a tiny slug, and break it up between them, and the cock-bird goes on singing among the broom, while the hen perches a little way off, twittering nervously and peevishly.

“Chick, chick, che-ee!” says the bird. “I don’t pretend to build such a pretty nest as the chaffinch; besides, such a flimsy thing as his would not do on the ground; mine has a solid foundation of hay, don’t you see? That keeps out the damp, and that lining of hair is warmer than anything else in the world.”

A poor, persecuted little bird is this same yellow bunting; and schoolboys often, when they find the nest, scatter it and its precious contents to the four winds of heaven.

All the more reason why we should be kind to the pet if we happen to have it in confinement. It is true the wild song is not very interesting; but when a young one is got, it will improve itself if it can listen to the song of another bird, for nearly all our feathered songsters possess the gift of imitation.

Chapter Sixteen.

A Friend of my Student Days

I had cured friend Frank’s dog of some trifling ailment, and she seemed fonder of me than ever. “Poor Meg,” I said, patting her.

Dogs are never ungrateful for kindnesses, but I have seen many noted instances of revenge, and so doubtless have many of my readers. Here is a case. At one time of day my father possessed a breed of beautiful black game-cocks. One of these had a great aversion to dogs, and a bull-terrier, who was tied up in a stall in the stable, came in for a considerable share of blows and abuse from a certain brave bird of the King Jock strain. I myself was a witness to the assault, but I dared not interfere, for to tell you the truth, that game-cock was one too many for me then, and I wouldn’t care to be attacked by a bird of the same kind even now. King Jock had come into the stable to pick a bit by himself, for he was far too cavalierly to eat much before the hens. “Give everything to the ladies and go without yourself” is game-cock etiquette. Presently he spied “Danger” lying in the stall with his head on his two fore-paws.

“Oh! you’re there, are you?” said King Jock, holding his head to the ground, and keening up with one eye at the poor dog. “Didn’t notice ye before. It ain’t so light as it might be.”

Danger gave one apologetic wag of his tail. “Pretty fellow you are, ain’t ye?” continued the cock, edging a bit nearer.

“Eh? Why don’t you speak?”

“Ho! ho! it’s chained ye are, is it? I’ve a good mind to let you have it on that ugly patched face of yours. And, by my halidom, I will too. Who ran through the yard yesterday and scared the senses out of half my harem? Take that, and that, and that. Try to bite, would you? Then you’ll have another; there! and there!”

Poor Danger’s head was covered with round lumps as big as half marbles, and each lump had a spur-hole. Cock Jock had made good practice, which he had much reason to repent, for one day Master Danger broke loose, and went straight away to look for his enemy. Jock possessed a tail that any cock might have been proud of, but after his encounter with Danger his pride had a fall, for in his speedy flight he got stuck in a hedge, and the dog tore every feather out, and would have eaten his way into, and probably through, King Jock himself, if the twig hadn’t snapped, and the bird escaped. After that King Jock was content to treat bull-terriers with quiet disdain.

Dogs know much of what is said to them, especially if you do not speak too fast, for, if you do, they get nervous, and forget their English. It is, in my opinion, better not to alter your form of speech, nor the tone of your voice, when talking to a dog. My old friend Tyro, a half-bred collie, but most beautiful animal, understood and was in the habit of being talked to in three languages, to say nothing of broad Scotch, namely, English, Gaelic, and Latin – no, not dog Latin, by your leave, sir, but the real Simon Pure and Ciceronic. I don’t mean to assert that he could appreciate the beauties of the Bucolics, nor Horatian love lays if read to him; but he would listen respectfully, and he would obey ordinary orders when couched in the Roman tongue. Every animal that had hair and ran was, to Tyro, a cat; every animal that had feathers was a crow, and these he qualified by size. In a flock of sheep, for instance, if you asked him to chase out the big “cat,” it was a ram, who got no peace till he came your way; if, in a flock of fowls, you had asked him to chase out the big “crow,” it was the cock who had to fly; if you said the wee crow, a bantam or hen would be the victim. An ordinary cat was simply a cat, and if you asked him to go and find one, it would be about the barn-yards or stables he would search. But if you told him to go and find a “grub-cat,” it was off to the hills he would be, and if you listened you would presently hear him in chase, and he would seldom return without a grub-cat, that meant a cat that could be eaten – i.e., a hare or rabbit. He knew when told to go and take a drink of water; but, at sea, the ocean all around him was pointed out to him as the big drink of water. In course of time he grew fond of the sea, though the commotion in the water and the breakers must have been strange and puzzling to him; but if at any time he was told to go and take a look at the big drink of water, he would put his two fore-paws on the bulwarks and watch the waves for many minutes at a time.