Birds in Town and Village by William Hudson
Author:William Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: bird, birds, watching, watcher, birdwatching, birdwatcher, ornithology, ornithologist, english, england
ISBN: 9781781664063
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-06-12T00:00:00+00:00
XI
Bright and genial were all the last days of June, when I loitered in the lanes before the unwished day of my return to London. During this quiet, pleasant time the greenfinch was perhaps more to me than any other songster. In the village itself, with the adjacent lanes and orchards, this pretty, seldom-silent bird was the most common species. The village was his metropolis, just as London is ours - and the sparrow's; its lanes were his streets, its hedges and elm trees his cottage rows and tall stately mansions and public buildings. We frequently find the predominance of one species somewhat wearisome. Speaking for myself, there are songsters that are best appreciated when they are limited in numbers and keep their distance, but of the familiar, unambitious strains of swallow, robin, and wren I never tire, nor, during these days, could I have too much of the greenfinch, low as he ranks among British melodists. Tastes differ; that is a point on which we are all agreed, and every one of us, even the humblest, is permitted to have his own preferences. Still, after re-reading Wordsworth's lines to "The Green Linnet," it is curious, to say the least of it, to turn to some prosewriter - an authority on birds, perhaps - to find that this species, whose music so charmed the poet, has for its song a monotonous croak, which it repeats at short intervals for hours without the slightest variation - a dismal sound which harmonizes with no other sound in nature, and suggests nothing but heat and weariness, and is of all natural sounds the most irritating. To this writer, then - and there are others to keep him in countenance - the greenfinch as a vocalist ranks lower than the lowest. One can only wonder (and smile) at such extreme divergences. To my mind all natural sounds have, in some measure an exhilarating effect, and I cannot get rid of the notion that so it should be with every one of us; and when some particular sound, or series of sounds, that has more than this common character, and is distinctly pleasing, is spoken of as nothing but disagreeable, irritating, and the rest of it, I am inclined to think that there is something wrong with the person who thus describes it; that he is not exactly as nature would have had him, but that either during his independent life, or before it at some period of his prenatal existence, something must have happened to distune him. All this, I freely confess, may be nothing but fancy. In any case, the subject need not keep us longer from the greenfinch - that is to say, my greenfinch not another man's.
From morning until evening all around and about the cottage, and out of doors whithersoever I bent my steps, from the masses of deep green foliage, sounded the perpetual airy prattle of these delightful birds. One had the idea that the concealed vocalists were continually
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