Among the Birds in Northern Shires. Charles Dixon
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Another and daintier species, however, is almost his equal in this respect, and that is the Gray Wagtail. This bird is more susceptible to the changing seasons, and at the approach of winter deserts the higher streams altogether, or comes down to the lower and more sheltered reaches of others. The Gray Wagtail is a familiar bird along all our Yorkshire and Derbyshire streams and rivers. We look for him quite as a matter of course when we reach the rocks, and the alder and birch and mountain-ash trees, just as we expect there to find the Dipper. But this is in summer mostly; in winter he becomes far more familiar, and during that season comes much nearer to the busy haunts of men. We have often seen Gray Wagtails in the bed of the grimy Don and Sheaf in the very heart of smoky Sheffield during mid-winter; and we know the bird as a winter resident about all the streams and sluices and dams in the series of Endcliffe Woods. The bird seems, however, closely attached to the stream in its upland solitudes, and at the first sign of spring goes back to favourite haunts among the moorlands and hills. We can recall many a romantic reach of the Derwent, the Wye, and the Dove, where the Gray Wagtail, the Dipper, and the Kingfisher might be watched together, the former bird, daintiest and most charming of its kind, deftly poised on a rock in mid-stream vigorously beating its long tail, looking like a single feather until it was opened as the startled bird took flight; the two latter species flying alarmed away arrow-like, following the winding waters, the one as a particoloured ball, the other as a blue undefined streak of refulgent light. So likewise has the Gray Wagtail oft been our sole bird companion on many a Highland water, both on the mainland and in Skye. We never tire of watching its sylph-like actions, the dainty way it poises on the stones or flits along before us stage after stage in undulating flight uttering its cheery chiz zit as it goes, or of admiring the exquisite blending of its showy yet delicately coloured plumage. We have often made his acquaintance upon more southern waters, far away in the remote south-west of England, but somehow he never there evokes the same feelings with which we greet him in northern haunts. The Gray Wagtail visits these upland streams for the purpose of rearing its young. Not every wanderer by the water-side is fortunate enough to get a peep at this bird’s domestic arrangements. It has, fortunately perhaps, a happy way of concealing its nest under some large stone or overhanging rock, or in a quiet nook, not necessarily in a secluded spot, but often close by the wayside, where the very audacity of the selection proves a source of safety. A scrappy little nest it is, dry grass and roots and such-like litter thrown carelessly together, and lined with hair or more rarely a few feathers; artless, yet possessing a rustic beauty if wanting that elaborate finish of more painstaking nest-builders. The five or six eggs are as unassuming as the nest that holds them, grayish-white freckled with brown, and perhaps with here and there a scratch of darker hue. The bird is an early breeder, making its nest in April, although we have remarked that in Scotland it is a little later in its operations. This pretty Wagtail still further endears itself to us by its attachment to a certain breeding-place, returning in many cases year by year to build its nest in one particular spot. Unfortunately the Gray Wagtail can claim but low rank as a songster. None of our British Wagtails are singers of much merit, and all confine their melody to fitful and short snatches of rambling song, almost invariably uttered as the bird hovers and flutters in the air. The Gray Wagtail’s charm rests in its pretty dress, its graceful actions, and to some extent in its loneliness, for there are few other small birds to arrest attention in the haunts it loves. It can claim our almost undivided admiration on the streams of the uplands from one extreme corner of Great Britain to the other. Certainly of few other birds can we say so much; although such an extended distribution is entirely due to physical conditions—to the presence of mountains and uplands throughout that area.
The Dipper and the Gray Wagtail are the two characteristic birds of the upland brook and river-side, rarely if ever seen anywhere else under normal circumstances, and, so far as our observations go, their happy lives are passed in much the same manner on the streams of both northern and southern shires, with the one exceptional movement to more sheltered areas on the part of the latter species in boreal localities. There is, however, another charming bird of the mountain streams which we cannot pass unnoticed, and that is the Common Sandpiper, or “Summer Snipe” as it is called in many districts. But this species is by no means exclusively confined to the banks and waters of the upland streams; neither is it a permanent dweller in such localities. It is a frequenter of our rivers and streams during summer only, the season of their greatest attractiveness; speeding south to Africa like the Swallows when autumn creeps over the uplands. From Cornwall to the Shetlands, wherever there are mountain streams and upland pools we may meet with the Common Sandpiper between the months of May and September, but it is in the northern shires that the bird becomes most abundant, say from the Peak district onwards. Our experience of this engaging bird has been a lifelong one. Each succeeding spring we used to note its arrival in the old accustomed haunts on the banks of the Yorkshire streams and moorland pools towards the end of April. It appears upon our Devonshire and Cornish waters nearly a fortnight earlier, yet farther north, in the Highlands, it is seldom seen before the first or second week in May. The return journey varies in a corresponding manner, August and September marking its southern departure from the north; but in the south it lingers into October, November, and even December—not, however, by the stream side, but on the sea-shore. The persistency with which this Sandpiper returns each year to certain localities, and its habit of nesting in the same spot summer after summer after a prolonged absence of seven months and a double journey of thousands of miles, are not the least attractive portions of its economy. For more summers than we can now recall, the streams and reservoirs at Hollow Meadows and Red Mires—within an hour or so’s walk of Sheffield—were visited by many pairs of Summer Snipes, and their nests came under our observation with unfailing certainty. Two pairs of these birds were remarkably conservative in their nesting-grounds, and used to return each summer to one spot of ground no larger than our writing-table, and there make their nests—one pair on the steep banks of a conduit between the reservoirs, the other on a few square yards of gravelly ground beside Wyming brook. We could always depend upon finding the nests of other pairs within a hundred yards of the stream banks on certain lengths of the water. We would hazard the conjecture that descendants of these birds continue to do so to the present day. During summer the Sandpiper was quite as familiar an object along these northern streams as the Dipper or the Gray Wagtail. Many a time have we seen the three species by the water-side together. Farther north, in Scotland, this Sandpiper becomes even more numerous, and in some parts of the Highlands is, or used to be, most unaccountably mixed up with the Dipper. The latter term included both species, the keepers not distinguishing between them. We have heard the Sandpiper called a “Water-crow” in various parts of Skye especially. Few birds evince more anxiety at the nest, or when their helpless chicks are just abroad. For the newly-laid eggs we cannot recall an instance of this species displaying any concern; but when those eggs are deeply incubated or the young hatched out the behaviour of the female bird especially becomes very different. She will feign a broken wing or lameness, or endeavour to draw all attention upon herself by running just out of reach of any observer foolish enough to give pursuit. But once the young birds have concealed themselves the parent flies away, or circles about in the air, generally being joined by her mate. The four handsome pear-shaped eggs—pale buff, splashed and spotted with rich brown and gray—in their scanty nest, usually made beneath the shelter of a heath tuft or bunch of grass, require no special protection from the parent, for they harmonize so closely in tint with surrounding objects that discovery is difficult in the extreme, even when we know the exact location of their resting-place. Curiously enough the Sandpiper is not aquatic in its habits. It never swims nor dives save when wounded, but obtains its food whilst tripping round the muddy and sandy portions of the water’s edge. In early summer, just after their arrival, the cock birds may frequently be seen running along the tops of walls and fences with outspread drooping wings, or even soaring into the air uttering a shrill note, both actions being connected with courtship and love. The usual note of the Common Sandpiper is a shrill weet uttered several times in succession, and heard most frequently as the bird rises startled from the bank and pursues its way across the water, often so low as to strike the surface with its wings.
There are many other birds, of course, that may be met with by upland streams,