Bramble-Bees and Others

Author:Fabre, Jean-Henri [Fabre, Jean-Henri]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science, Nature
Publisher: manybooks.net

CHAPTER 8.

THE LEAF-CUTTERS. It is not enough that animal industry should be able, to a certain extent, to adapt itself to casual exigencies when choosing the site of a nest; if the race is to thrive, something else is required, something which hide-bound instinct is unable to provide. The Chaffinch, for instance, introduces a great quantity of lichen into the outer layer of his nest. This is his method of strengthening the edifice and making a stout framework in which to place first the bottom mattress of moss, fine straw and rootlets and then the soft bed of feathers, wool and down. But, should the time-honoured lichen be lacking, will the bird refrain from building its nest? Will it forgo the delight of hatching its brood because it has not the wherewithal to settle its family in the orthodox fashion?

No, the chaffinch is not perplexed by so small a matter; he is an expert in materials, he understands botanical equivalents. In the absence of the branches of the evernias, he picks the long beards of the usneas, the wartlike rosettes of the parmelias, the membranes of the stictises torn away in shreds; if he can find nothing better, he makes shift with the bushy tufts of the cladonias. As a practical lichenologist, when one species is rare or lacking in the neighbourhood, he is able to fall back on others, varying greatly in shape, colour and texture. And, if the impossible happened and lichen failed entirely, I credit the Chaffinch with sufficient talent to be able to dispense with it and to build the foundations of his nest with some coarse moss or other.

What the worker in lichens tells us the other weavers of textile materials confirm. Each has his favourite flora, which hardly ever varies when the plant is easily accessible and which can be supplemented by plenty of others when it is not. The bird's botany would be worth examining; it would be interesting to draw up the industrial herbal of each species. In this connection, I will quote just one instance, so as not to stray too far from the subject in hand.

The Red-backed Shrike (Lanius collurio), the commonest variety in my district, is noteworthy because of his savage mania for forked gibbets, the thorns in the hedgerows whereon he impales the voluminous contents of his game-bag--little half-fledged birds, small Lizards, Grasshoppers, caterpillars, Beetles--and leaves them to get high. To this passion for the gallows, which has passed unnoticed by the country-folk, at least in my part, he adds another, an innocent botanical passion, which is so much in evidence that everybody, down to the youngest bird's-nester, knows all about it. His nest, a massive structure, is made of hardly any other materials than a greyish and very fluffy plant, which is found everywhere among the corn. This is the Filago spathulata of the botanists; and the bird also makes use, though less frequently, of the Filago germanica, or common cotton-rose. Both are known in Provencal by the name herbo dou tarnagas, or Shrike-herb.

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