Chapter I: Preface

This little book is nothing more than an attempt to help those who love birds, but know little about them, to realize something of the enjoyment which I have gained, in work-time as well as in holiday, for many years past, from the habit of watching and listening for my favourites.

What I have to tell, such as it is, is told in close relation to two or three localities: an English city, an English village, and a well-known district of the Alps. This novelty (if it be one) is not likely, I think, to cause the ordinary reader any difficulty. Oxford is so familiar to numbers of English people apart from its permanent residents, that I have ventured to write of it without stopping to describe its geography; and I have purposely confined myself to the city and its precincts, in order to show how rich in bird-life an English town may be. The Alps, too, are known to thousands, and the walk I have described in Chapter III., if the reader should be unacquainted with it, may easily be followed by reference to the excellent maps of the Oberland in the guide-books of Ball or Baedeker. The chapters about the midland village, which lies in ordinary English country, will explain their own geography.

One word about the title and the arrangement of the chapters. We Oxford tutors always reckon our year as beginning with the October term, and ending with the close of the Long Vacation. My chapters are arranged on this reckoning; to an Oxford residence from October to June, broken only by short vacations, succeeds a brief holiday in the Alps; then comes a sojourn in the midlands; and of the leisurely studies which the latter part of the Long Vacation allows, I have given an ornithological specimen in the last chapter.

Some parts of the first, second, and fifth chapters have appeared in the _Oxford Magazine_, and I have to thank the Editors for leave to reprint them. The third chapter, or rather the substance of it, was given as a lecture to the energetic Natural History Society of Marlborough College, and has already been printed in their reports; the sixth chapter has been developed out of a paper lately read before the Oxford Philological Society.

The reader will notice that I have said very little about uncommon birds, and have tried to keep to the habits, songs, and haunts of the commoner kinds, which their very abundance endears to their human friends. I have made no collection, and it will therefore be obvious to ornithologists that I have no scientific knowledge of structure and classification beyond that which I have obtained at second-hand. And, indeed, if I thought I were obtruding myself on the attention of ornithologists, I should feel as audacious as the Robin which is at this moment, in my neighbour’s outhouse, sitting on eggs for which, with characteristic self-confidence, she has chosen a singular resting-place in an old cage, once the prison-house of an ill-starred Goldfinch.

There are few days, from March to July, when even the shortest stroll may not reveal something of interest to the careful watcher. It was pleasant, this brilliant spring morning, to find that a Redstart, perhaps the same individual noticed on page 120, had not forgotten my garden during his winter sojourn in the south; and that a pair of Pied Flycatchers, the first of their species which I have known to visit us here, were trying to make up their minds to build their nest in an old gray wall, almost within a stone’s throw of our village church.

Kingham, Oxon.
_April 24, 1886._

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION.

My little book, which never expected to spread the circle of its acquaintance much beyond its Oxford friends, has been introduced by the goodwill of reviewers to a wider society, and has been apparently welcomed there. To enable it to present itself in the world to better advantage, I have added to it a new chapter on the Alpine birds, and have made a considerable number of additions and corrections in the original chapters; but I hope I have left it as modest and unpretending as I originally meant it to be.

During the process of revision, I have been aided by valuable criticisms and suggestions from several ornithological and bird-loving friends, and particularly from Rev. H. A. Macpherson, A. H. Macpherson, Esq., O. V. Aplin, Esq., and W. T. Arnold, Esq., whose initials will be found here and there in notes and appendices. I have also to thank Archdeacon Palmer for most kindly pointing out some blemishes in the chapter on the Birds of Virgil.

W. WARDE FOWLER.

Lincoln College, Oxford.
_Nov. 19, 1886._

NOTE TO THIRD EDITION.

Though my knowledge of birds has naturally grown fast since I wrote these chapters, I have thought it better, except in one instance, to resist the temptation of re-writing or interpolating for this edition. The book stands almost exactly as it was when the second edition was issued; but the list of Oxford birds is omitted, as Mr. Aplin’s work on the Birds of Oxfordshire, shortly to be published by the Clarendon Press, will embody all the information there given. I regret that the frontispiece, drawn for the original edition by my friend Professor W. Baldwin Spencer, can no longer be reproduced.

I wish to express my thanks to Mr. B. H. Blackwell, of Oxford, not only for the care and pains he bestowed upon the issue of the former editions, but for the ready courtesy with which he fell in with my wish to transfer the book to the hands of Messrs. Macmillan.

W. W. F.

_June 4, 1889._

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER I.
Oxford: Autumn and Winter.

How I came to notice birds—Oxford favourable to bird-life—Late
lingerers in October—Migration and pugnacity of Robins—The
Bullfinch and the buds—Parsons’ Pleasure and the
Cherwell—Kingfishers rare in the summer term—Colouring of the
Kingfisher—The Gray Wagtail at the weir; its beauty—The Lesser
Redpoll—An eccentric Jack-snipe—Birds of the Park and Magdalen
Walk—Lesser Spotted Woodpecker—Christchurch meadow and the Botanic
Garden; Titmice, Blackbirds, Redwings—Sea-birds in Port Meadow 1

CHAPTER II.
Oxford: Spring and Summer.

Departure of winter birds—Warblers; explanation of the
term—Different kinds of warblers—Tree-warblers—Chiff-chaff’s
arrival—Willow-warbler’s song and nest—Blackcap and
Garden-warbler; their songs compared—The two Whitethroats at
Parsons’ Pleasure; how to distinguish them—River-warblers;
comparative rarity of Reed-warbler; his song compared with
Sedge-warbler’s—The Redstart and pollard willows—Summer habits of
Oxford Sparrows—Flycatcher and other birds in the Parks 35

CHAPTER III.
The Alps in June.

The Alpine pastures in June—Ornithologists and the Alps—Johann
Anderegg, a peasant naturalist—Number of species in Switzerland;
abundance of food—Migration, complete and partial—The Alps how far
a barrier to migrating birds—The three ornithological regions of
Switzerland; migrations within them—Stanz-stadt and its
reed-bed—Valley of the Aa—White Wagtail and Black Redstart—The
Swallow family—The Alps proper and their birds; Water-pipit,
etc.—Citril Finch at the Engstlen Alp—Snow-finches—Rock-creeper;
its habits—Birds of the pine-forests; Woodpeckers,
Tit-mice—Crested Tit in the Gentelthal—Bonelli’s Warbler at
Meiringen 68

CHAPTER IV.
A Midland Village. Garden and Meadow.

Description of the vale of the Evenlode—Situation of the village;
variety of scenery—Movements of the birds in the district—A
bird-haunted garden—Redstart; its increase of late years—A Black
Redstart on an ugly wall—Cuckoo and Robin’s nest—Ingenious
Nuthatches—Spotted Flycatcher; his peculiarities—Allotments and
Rooks—Green Sandpiper in the brook; occurrence in midwinter—Habits
of young birds—Rooks hostile to intruders—Long-tailed Tits on the
ice 111

CHAPTER V.
A Midland Village: Railway and Woodland.

Railways favourable to birds—Whinchat and Stonechat—Peculiarities
of the Buntings—Nests by the railway—Ring-ousel—Song of the
Tree-pipit—Pipits, Larks, Wagtails—Predatory birds of the
woods—Interview with a Grasshopper Warbler; its “reel”—Beauty of
the Nightingale; its habits and song—Song-birds of the
woods—Woodpeckers—Birds of the hills—Local migrations during the
year 144

CHAPTER VI.
The Alps in September.

Geography of Switzerland—Bird-catching on the passes—Birds on the
Brünig Pass—The Hasli-Thal—Crossbills—The Gadmen-Thal and
Stein-alp—Migration on the Susten-pass—Hospenthal—Departure of
Swallows—Migration of insects—Return to Meiringen—The Swiss
peasant 177