In Both Instances, Just As The
Front Wheel Was Touching The Tail, The Little Flat-Headed
Rascal Swerved Quickly Aside And Escaped.
Even some of the less common and less tame birds care as
little for a man on a bicycle as they do for a cow.
Not long
ago a peewit trotted leisurely across the road not more than
ten yards from my front wheel; and on the same day I came upon
a green woodpecker enjoying a dust-bath in the public road.
He declined to stir until I stopped to watch him, then merely
flew about a dozen yards away and attached himself to the
trunk of a fir tree at the roadside and waited there for me to
go. Never in all my wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale
dusting himself like a barn-door fowl!
It is not seriously contended that birds can be observed
narrowly in this easy way; but even for the most conscientious
field naturalist the wheel has its advantages. It carries him
quickly over much barren ground and gives him a better view of
the country he traverses; finally, it enables him to see more
birds. He will sometimes see thousands in a day where,
walking, he would hardly have seen hundreds, and there is joy
in mere numbers. It was just to get this general rapid sight
of the bird life of the neighbouring hilly district of
Hampshire that I was at Newbury on the last day of October.
The weather was bright though very cold and windy, and towards
evening I was surprised to see about twenty swallows in
Northbrook Street flying languidly to and fro in the shelter
of the houses, often fluttering under the eaves and at
intervals sitting on ledges and projections. These belated
birds looked as if they wished to hibernate, or find the most
cosy holes to die in, rather than to emigrate. On the
following day at noon they came out again and flew up and down
in the same feeble aimless manner.
Undoubtedly a few swallows of all three species, but mostly
house-martins, do "lie up" in England every winter, but
probably very few survive to the following spring. We should
have said that it was impossible that any should survive but
for one authentic instance in recent years, in which a
barn-swallow lived through the winter in a semi-torpid state
in an outhouse at a country vicarage. What came of the
Newbury birds I do not know, as I left on the 2nd of November
- tore myself away, I may say, for, besides meeting with
people I didn't know who treated a stranger with sweet
friendliness, it is a town which quickly wins one's
affections. It is built of bricks of a good deep rich red
- not the painfully bright red so much in use now - and no
person has had the bad taste to spoil the harmony by
introducing stone and stucco. Moreover, Newbury has, in Shaw
House, an Elizabethan mansion of the rarest beauty.
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