BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES BY EDMUND SELOUS WITH 12 HEADINGS AND 6 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. E. LODGE LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN, 156 CHARING CROSS ROAD. MCMV [All rights reserved] FLINT HOUSE, ICKLINGHAM...

In the autumn of 1899 I came to live at Icklingham in Suffolk, and remained there, with occasional intervals of absence, for the next three years. During the greater part of that period I kept a day-to-day journal of field observation and reflection, and the following pages represent, for the most part, a portion of this. They are the work of one who professes nothing except to have used his eyes and ears to the best of his ability, and to give only, both in regard to fact and theory, the result

Icklingham, in and about which most of the observations contained in the following pages have been made, is a little village of West Suffolk, situated on the northern bank of the river Lark. It lies between Mildenhall and Bury St. Edmunds, amidst country which is very open, and so sandy and barren that in the last geological survey it is described as having more the character of an Arabian desert than an ordinary English landscape. There are, indeed, wide stretches where the sand has so encroach

One bird there is to whom these scattered fir plantations, with their surrounding, sandy territory, dotted here and there with a gaunt elder-bush or gnarled old hawthorn, are extremely dear, and that bird is the nightjar. Nightjars are very common here. If spruces and larches alternate with the prevailing Scotch fir, they love to sit on the extreme tip-top of one of these, and there, sometimes, they will “churr” without intermission for an extraordinary length of time. Sometimes it seems as if t

The hooded crow is common in this part of the country, during the winter; to the extent, indeed, of being quite a feature of it. With the country people he is the carrion crow merely, and they do not appear to make any distinction between him and the ordinary bird of that name, which is not seen nearly so often. He is the one they have grown up with, and know best, but his pied colouring does not seem to have gained him any specially distinctive title. For the most part, these crows haunt the op

There is a heronry on an estate here, into which, in the early spring, I have sometimes crept, coming before dawn, in silence and darkness, to be there when it awoke. What an awakening! A sudden scream, as though the night were stabbed, and cried out—a scream to chill one's very blood—followed by a deep “oogh,” and then a most extraordinary noise in the throat, a kind of croak sometimes, but more often a kind of pipe, like a subdued siren—a fog-signal—yet pleasing, even musical. Sometimes, again

Another bird, very characteristic, whilst it stays, of the steppes of Icklingham, is the wheat-ear. A blithe day it is when the first pair arrive, in splendid plumage always—the male quite magnificent, the female, with her softer shades, like a tender afterglow to his fine sunset. Both are equally pleasing to look at, but the cock bird is by much the more amusing to watch. Who shall describe him and all his nice little ways—his delicate little hops; his still more delicate little pauses, when he

Starlings are not birds to make part of an olla podrida merely—as in my last chapter—so I shall devote this one to them, more or less entirely. I will begin with a defence of the bird, in regard to his relations with the green woodpecker. Not, indeed, that he can be acquitted on the main charge brought against him, viz. that he appropriates to himself the woodpecker’s nest. This he certainly does do, and his conduct in so doing has aroused a good deal of indignation, not always, perhaps, of the

Peewits, besides those aerial antics which are of love, or appertaining to love, have some other and very strange ones, of the same nature, which they go through with on the ground. A bird, indulging in these, presses his breast upon the ground, and uses it as a pivot upon which he sways or rolls, more or less violently, from side to side. The legs, during this process, are hardly to be seen, but must, I suppose, support the body, which is inclined sharply upwards from the breast. The wings proj

Tits, as I think I have said, or implied, are a feature of Icklingham. They like the fir plantations, which, though of no great dimensions—for they only make a patch here and there—are to them, by virtue of their tininess, as the wide-stretching forests of Brazil. Sitting here, in the spring-time, on the look-out, with a general alertness for anything, but not thinking of tits in particular, one may become, gradually, aware—for their softness sinks upon one, one never sees them suddenly—of one o

It was on a 13th of April, that, having spent some hours in the woods, to no purpose, I at length climbed the hill, up which they ran, and came out upon a smooth slope of turf, from which I had a good view down amongst the trees, which did not grow very thickly. As I emerged, I saw a woodpecker feeding on the grass, and shortly afterwards two, pursuing each other, flew down upon it, from the wood, but, seeing me, flew back again. It instantly struck me that here was an ideal spot to study the ha

Shakespeare’s “guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet,” makes “his pendent bed and procreant cradle,” year after year, on the flint walls of my house in Icklingham, thus offering me every facility for a full observation of its domestic habits. For long I have been intending to make these a study, but the very proximity which seemed to be such an advantage, has proved a hindrance; for it is one thing to steal silently into a lonely plantation, or lie, at full length, on the wild waste of th

The Lark, which is our river here, and more particularly the little stream that runs into it, are, like most rivers and streams in England, much haunted by moorhens and dabchicks, especially by the former, though in winter I have seen as many as eleven of the latter—the little dabchicks—swimming, dipping, and skimming over the water, together. There is a fascination in making oneself acquainted with the ways of these little birds. They are not so easy to watch, and yet they are not so very very

One evening in June 1901—the 6th, to be precise—I was walking near Tuddenham, where a big lane crosses a little stream by a rustic bridge, and stopped to lean against the palings on one side. Looking along the water, I saw, but hardly noticed, what looked like a snag or stump, round which some weeds and débris had accumulated. All at once, my eye caught something move on this, and, turning the glasses upon it, I at once saw that a dabchick was sitting on its nest. I watched it, for a little, and