Birds on the Western Front
by Saki
[pen name of Hector Hugh Munro, who was killed by a sniper during
World War One; published posthumously in 1924, and has also been
cited bibliographically as "Birds of..."]
Considering the enormous economic dislocation which the war
operations have caused in the regions where the campaign is
raging, there seems to be very little corresponding disturbance
in the bird life of the same districts. Rats and mice have
mobilized and swarmed into the fighting line, and there has been
a partial mobilization of owls, particularly barn owls, following
in the wake of the mice, and making laudable efforts to thin out
their numbers. What success attends their hunting one cannot
estimate; there are always sufficient mice left over to populate
one's dug-out and make a parade-ground and race-course of one's
face at night. In the matter of nesting accommodation the barn
owls are well provided for; most of the still intact barns in the
war zone are requisitioned for billeting purposes, but there is a
wealth of ruined houses, whole streets and clusters of them, such
as can hardly have been available at any previous moment of the
world's history since Nineveh and Babylon became humanly
desolate. Without human occupation and cultivation there can have
been no corn, no refuse, and consequently very few mice, and the
owls of Nineveh cannot have enjoyed very good hunting; here in
Northern France the owls have desolation and mice at their
disposal in unlimited quantities, and as these birds breed in
winter as well as in summer, there should be a goodly output of
war owlets to cope with the swarming generations of war mice.
Apart from the owls one cannot notice that the campaign is making
any marked difference in the bird life of the country-side. The
vast flocks of crows and ravens that one expected to find in the
neighbourhood of the fighting line are non-existent, which is
perhaps rather a pity. The obvious explanation is that the roar
and crash and fumes of high explosives have driven the crow tribe
in panic from the fighting area; like many obvious explanations,
it is not a correct one. The crows of the locality are not
attracted to the battlefield, but they certainly are not scared
away from it. The rook is normally so gun-shy and nervous where
noise is concerned that the sharp banging of a barn door or the
report of a toy pistol will sometimes set an entire rookery in
commotion; out here I have seen him sedately busy among the
refuse heaps of a battered village, with shells bursting at no
great distance, and the impatient-sounding, snapping rattle of
machine-guns going on all round him; for all the notice that he
took he might have been in some peaceful English meadow on a
sleepy Sunday afternoon. Whatever else German frightfulness may
have done it has not frightened the rook of North-Eastern France;
it has made his nerves steadier than they have ever been before,
and future generations of small boys, employed in scaring rooks
away from the sown crops in this region, will have to invent
something in the way of super-frightfulness to achieve their
purpose. Crows and magpies are nesting well within the
shell-swept area, and over a small beech-copse I once saw a pair
of crows engaged in hot combat with a pair of sparrow-hawks,
while considerably higher in the sky, but almost directly above
them, two Allied battle-planes were engaging an equal number of
enemy aircraft.
Unlike the barn owls, the magpies have had their choice of
building sites considerably restricted by the ravages of war; the
whole avenues of poplars, where they were accustomed to construct
their nests, have been blown to bits, leaving nothing but
dreary-looking rows of shattered and splintered trunks to show
where once they stood. Affection for a particular tree has in one
case induced a pair of magpies to build their bulky, domed nest
in the battered remnants of a poplar of which so little remained
standing that the nest looked almost bigger than the tree; the
effect rather suggested an archiepiscopal enthronement taking
place in the ruined remains of Melrose Abbey. The magpie, wary
and suspicious in his wild state, must be rather intrigued at the
change that has come over the erst – while fearsome
not-to-be-avoided human, stalking everywhere over the earth as
its possessor, who now creeps about in screened and sheltered
ways, as chary of showing himself in the open as the shyest of
wild creatures.
The buzzard, that earnest seeker after mice, does not seem to be
taking any war risks, at least I have never seen one out here,
but kestrels hover about all day in the hottest parts of the
line, not in the least disconcerted, apparently, when a promising
mouse-area suddenly rises in the air in a cascade of black or
yellow earth. Sparrow-hawks are fairly numerous, and a mile or
two back from the firing line I saw a pair of hawks that I took
to be red-legged falcons, circling over the top of an oak-copse.
According to investigations made by Russian naturalists, the
effect of the war on bird life on the Eastern front has been more
marked than it has been over here. "During the first year of the
war rooks disappeared, larks no longer sang in the fields, the
wild pigeon disappeared also." The skylark in this region has
stuck tenaciously to the meadows and croplands that have been
seamed and bisected with trenches and honeycombed with
shell-holes. In the chill, misty hour of gloom that precedes a
rainy dawn, when nothing seemed alive except a few wary
waterlogged sentries and many scuttling rats, the lark would
suddenly dash skyward and pour forth a song of ecstatic
jubilation that sounded horribly forced and insincere. It seemed
scarcely possible that the bird could carry its insouciance to
the length of attempting to rear a brood in that desolate
wreckage of shattered clods and gaping shell-holes, but once,
having occasion to throw myself down with some abruptness on my
face, I found myself nearly on the top of a brood of young larks.
Two of them had already been hit by something, and were in rather
a battered condition, but the survivors seemed as tranquil and
comfortable as the average nestling.
At the corner of a stricken wood (which has had a name made for
it in history, but shall be nameless here), at a moment when
lyddite and shrapnel and machine-gun fire swept and raked and
bespattered that devoted spot as though the artillery of an
entire Division had suddenly concentrated on it, a wee
hen-chaffinch flitted wistfully to and fro, amid splintered and
falling branches that had never a green bough left on them. The
wounded lying there, if any of them noticed the small bird, may
well have wondered why anything having wings and no pressing
reason for remaining should have chosen to stay in such a place.
There was a battered orchard alongside the stricken wood, and the
probable explanation of the bird's presence was that it had a
nest of young ones whom it was too scared to feed, too loyal to
desert. Later on, a small flock of chaffinches blundered into the
wood, which they were doubtless in the habit of using as a
highway to their feeding-grounds; unlike the solitary hen-bird,
they made no secret of their desire to get away as fast as their
dazed wits would let them. The only other bird I ever saw there
was a magpie, flying low over the wreckage of fallen tree-limbs;
"one for sorrow", says the old superstition. There was sorrow
enough in that wood.
The English gamekeeper, whose knowledge of wild life usually runs
on limited and perverted lines, has evolved a sort of religion as
to the nervous debility of even the hardiest game birds;
according to his beliefs a terrier trotting across a field in
which a partridge is nesting, or a mouse-hawking kestrel hovering
over the hedge, is sufficient cause to drive the distracted bird
off its eggs and send it whirring into the next county.
The partridge of the war zone shows no signs of such sensitive
nerves. The rattle and rumble of transport, the constant coming
and going of bodies of troops, the incessant rattle of musketry
and deafening explosions of artillery, the night-long flare and
flicker of star-shells, have not sufficed to scare the local
birds away from their chosen feeding grounds, and to all
appearances they have not been deterred from raising their
broods. Gamekeepers who are serving with the colours might seize
the opportunity to indulge in a little useful nature study.
|