Among the Birds in Northern Shires. Charles Dixon
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, but the foregoing are the characteristic species, each in every way adapted to a life in, or by, the side of their turbulent waters. These other species found by the mountain or upland waters may be met with in even greater plenty elsewhere, so that a mere passing mention of them will suffice in the present chapter. The Heron, of course, is a visitor to the side of the upland stream; often flushed from the quiet reaches where the trout and grayling hide under the moss-grown stones. He is, however, just as much at home by the margin of lowland pools and streams, or about the rocky coasts and estuaries, and no exclusive dweller or sojourner in one locality more than another. Then the Mallard, especially in the Highlands, shows a strong preference for these upland burns, especially during the breeding season; and we can recall instances of flushing the duck of this species with a numerous progeny from these mountain torrents. On one occasion we were tramping the moorlands in Skye in company with a gamekeeper friend and a fine retriever. Suddenly we came upon a brood of young Wild Ducks and their mother. The young birds scattered in all directions, and hid themselves in holes and corners by the stream and amongst the tufts of rushes. The old bird, however, would not leave her brood notwithstanding the onslaught of the barking dog. With bill wide open and wings expanded she refused to be driven from the spot; so that, to save her life we were obliged to secure the dog and to leave the spot, where doubtless she soon gathered her brood around her again. Then the Redshank, one of the prettiest and most graceful of our indigenous wading birds, is a by no means unfrequent visitor to the sandy reaches about the eddies in the Highland burns. This we have repeatedly remarked to be the case in Cromartyshire, in the streams that flow into Loch Carron, and in the vicinity of Strome Ferry. But more of all these interesting birds anon. Lower down the hillsides, where the course of the upland streams is marked by a fringe of alder-trees, we have avine visitors in some variety, especially during the autumn and winter months. These trees are a favourite resort of Redpoles, Siskins, and almost all the British species of Titmice between October and March. The Kingfisher again should claim passing notice in the bird-life of the upland stream. He, like the Heron, may be often met with during a ramble along the banks of these romantic water-ways, but inasmuch as he is also a dweller on all descriptions of water from the hills to the flat country, we cannot fairly claim him as a special feature in the bird-life of an upland stream. There are, for instance, many pairs of Kingfishers that habitually nest in the steep banks of the Derwent in its higher reaches among the hills and dales of the Peak; there are others on many of the hill brooks in the vicinity of Sheffield; whilst we have repeatedly seen this gem-like bird on many a Scottish burn. Lastly, we might mention that the cries of Plovers, Curlews, Grouse, and Greenshanks, the song of Ring-ouzel, Twite, and Titlark, the bleating of the Snipe, and the gag of Wild Geese may often be heard mingling with the babble of these upland torrents, and the birds themselves met with on their banks, or within a short distance of their waters; but all these species more correctly belong to other localities, and must be dealt with elsewhere.
CHAPTER II
ON MOORLANDS AND ROUGHS. 1
In a previous volume, dealing with bird-life in a southern county, we expressed disappointment not only with the miniature moorlands of Devonshire, but with their lack of feathered inhabitants. Tame these lands must ever seem by comparison with the typical moors, and from an ornithological point of view wanting in interest to persons familiar with the grand expanse of heath and mountain waste in the north. For many years we lived within little more than an hour’s walk of the Yorkshire and Derbyshire moors. At one period we used to visit them several times a week in quest of ornithological information, varying our experience by occasional much more extended excursions over them. We know them in the heat and the brightness of spring and summer; in the autumn, when their rolling expanse is aflame with a glow of purple and brazen bloom from the heath and gorse; as well as in winter, when the wind sweeps across them in resistless fury, and the snow covers them with a dazzling pall, levelling the hollows and drifting into fantastic wreaths. We retain vivid memories (supplemented with copious notes) of the constantly changing aspects of bird-life upon them. Farther afield we are well familiar with some of the wildest and grandest of the Highland heaths. Monotonous as these vast wastes may seem, relieved by little or no sylvan variety, a detailed examination will not fail to reveal that the impression gained by a casual scrutiny is an erroneous one. The configuration of their surface is subject to as much diversity as more pastoral or arboreal country. We find lofty eminences, spacious valleys, rolling billowy tracts, extensive plains, hills, and dales – all for the most part devoid of timber, yet presenting considerable variety in the vegetation according to the nature of the soil. The heather (of various kinds) is of course the one predominating shrub, but mingled amongst it are more or less extensive tracts of bilberry and kindred plants, of bracken, bramble, briar, and a host of others, the botanical names of which we need not stay here to specify. This is upon the drier ground; where marshy conditions prevail we find grasses of various kinds, rushes, large patches of sphagnum, variegated here and there with sundew and clumps of bell-heather, the latter easily identified by its large pale-pink blooms. Here and there the monotony of the moors is relieved by lofty crags and ridges of millstone grit, the slopes below them studded with boulders of varying size right down to the stream. In some parts the soil is deep and peaty, almost black; in others it is scanty, and the bed-rocks peep through the stone-strewn ground, where the sturdy ling and wire-like bilberry have a hard struggle to maintain themselves. Roughly speaking, each description of moorland ground has its own peculiar birds. Some species there are, it is true, that distribute themselves more or less universally throughout the moorlands, but others are confined to well-defined limits. Then, again, these moors are inhabited by two very distinct avifaunæ – a limited one which is practically sedentary, and a more extensive one composed entirely of migratory species. As might naturally be expected, the birds that can exist upon these bleak storm-swept moorlands during winter are extremely few; possibly we might reduce the number to a single species, and even this is occasionally partially driven from its heathy haunts by the inclemency of the northern winter. Of the avine visitors that flock to the moors each recurring spring-time, and just as surely depart in autumn, there are close upon thirty species – a goodly list, and which is slightly increased by a few passing migrants. From this it will be seen that these uplands, with their universal reputation for barrenness, are by no means devoid of bird-life, and that in summer especially they abound with interest to the ornithologist. The lover of birds, however, will in many, if not in most cases, find that his quest for knowledge is hampered by not a few restrictions. Almost everywhere these moors are jealously guarded from the intrusion of strangers, however harmless they may be. Keepers are ever on the look-out to warn intruders off the sacred breeding grounds of the Red Grouse; the hillsides and plains are systematically swept by the keeper’s telescope in quest of trespassers; innumerable notice-boards threaten the innocent wayfarer with all the rigours of the law should he chance to wander from the scarcely discernible footpath or the public highway. To ornithologize in comfort one must make our peace – usually purchasable at a certain price – with the custodians of the moors, and then all is plain sailing. There is much to be said both for and against such restrictions. On the one hand the Grouse represent vast sums of money to the owners of the moors, an income in not a few cases to many an otherwise impoverished landlord; considerable expense is incurred in maintaining a staff of keepers and watchers, and there is no small outlay in many other directions. On the other hand, there are those that argue that the public have a legitimate right to wander at will over these noble expanses of heather, that they should be free to all, and that no vested rights should be allowed in such an utterly wild bird as the Red Grouse. Unfortunately there can be little doubt that if the bird were not strictly preserved, and its shooting an expensive luxury, there would soon be no Red Grouse left. Of the two evils we would prefer the former after all, for every naturalist worthy of the name would deeply deplore the extermination of such an interesting species, found as it is in no other part of the world except on the British moorlands. Let us keep the species strong and vigorous and abundant, by whatever means, rather than see it meet the same wretched fate as
“Rough”, a local name for wild, uncultivated, rocky lands on the borders of the moors, clothed with coarse herbage, bramble, heath, and a variety of Vacciniaceæ, sphagnum, and other plants.