‘But they will be asleep at night.’
‘All the better chance of seeing them, without their flying away. You could go with Archimedes this evening, and he would tell you about them.’
‘Would you do that, Archimedes?’
‘I should love to,’ said the owl. ‘I was feeling like a little saunter myself.’
‘Do you know,’ asked the Wart, thinking of the thrush, ‘why birds sing, or how? Is it a language?’
‘Of course it is a language. It is not a big language like human speech, but it is large.’
‘Gilbert White,’ said Merlyn, ‘remarks, or will remark, however you like to put it, that “the language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, little is said, but much is intended.” He also says somewhere that “the rooks, in the breeding season, attempt sometimes, in the gaiety of their hearts, to sing – but with no great success.”’
‘I love rooks,’ said the Wart. ‘It is funny, but I think they are my favourite birds.’
‘Why?’ asked Archimedes.
‘Well, I like them. I like their sauce.’
‘Neglectful parents,’ quoted Merlyn, who was in a scholarly mood, ‘and saucy, perverse children.’
‘It is true,’ said Archimedes reflectively, ‘that all the corvidae have a distorted sense of humour.’
Wart explained.
‘I love the way they enjoy flying. They don’t just fly, like other birds, but they fly for fun. It is lovely when they hoist home to bed in a flock at night, all cheering and making rude remarks and pouncing on each other in a vulgar way. They turn over on their backs sometimes and tumble out of the air, just to be ridiculous, or else because they have forgotten they are flying and have coarsely begun to scratch themselves for fleas, without thinking about it.’
‘They are intelligent birds,’ said Archimedes, ‘in spite of their low humour. They are one of the birds that have parliaments, you know, and a social system.’
‘Do you mean they have laws?’
‘Certainly they have laws. They meet in the autumn, in a field, to talk them over.’
‘What sort of laws?’
‘Oh, well, laws about the defence of the rookery, and marriage, and so forth. You are not allowed to marry outside the rookery, and, if you do become quite lost to all sense of decency, and bring back a sable virgin from a neighbouring settlement, then everybody pulls your nest to pieces as fast as you can build it up. They make you go into the suburbs, you know, and that is why every rookery has out-lying nests all round it, several trees away.’
‘Another thing I like about them,’ said the Wart, ‘is their Go. They may be thieves and practical jokers, and they do quarrel and bully each other in a squawky way, but they have got the courage to mob their enemies. I should think it takes some courage to mob a hawk, even if there is a pack of you. And even while they are doing it they clown.’
‘They are mobs,’ said Archimedes, loftily. ‘You have said the word.’
‘Well, they are larky mobs, anyway,’ said the Wart, ‘and I like them.’
What is your favourite bird?’ asked Merlyn politely, to keep the peace.
Archimedes thought this over for some time, and then said, ‘Well, it is a large question. It is rather like asking you what is your favourite book. On the whole, however, I think that I must prefer the pigeon.’
‘To eat?’
‘I was leaving that side of it out,’ said the owl in civilized tones. ‘Actually the pigeon is the favourite dish of all raptors, if they are big enough to take her, but I was thinking of nothing but domestic habits.’
‘Describe them.’
‘The pigeon,’ said Archimedes, ‘is a kind of Quaker. She dresses in grey. A dutiful child, a constant lover, and a wise parent, she knows, like all philosophers, that the hand of every man is against her. She has learned throughout the centuries to specialize in escape. No pigeon has ever committed an act of aggression nor turned upon her persecutors: but no bird, likewise, is so skilful in eluding them. She has learned to drop out of a tree on the opposite side to man, and to fly low so that there is a hedge between them. No other bird can estimate a range so well. Vigilant, powdery, odorous and loose-feathered – so that dogs object to taking them in their mouths – armoured against pellets by the padding of these feathers, the pigeons coo to one another with true love, nourish their cunningly hidden children with true solicitude, and flee from the aggressor with true philosophy – a race of peace lovers continually caravanning away from the destructive Indian in covered wagons. They are loving individualists surviving against the forces of massacre only by wisdom in escape.
‘Did you know,’ added Archimedes, ‘that a pair of pigeons always roosts head to tail, so that they can keep a look-out in both directions?’
‘I know our tame pigeons do,’ said the Wart. ‘I suppose the reason why people are always trying to kill them is because they are so greedy. What I like about wood-pigeons is the clap of their wings, and how they soar up and close their wings and sink, during their courting flights, so that they fly rather like woodpeckers.’
‘It is not very like woodpeckers,’ said Merlyn.
‘No, it is not,’ admitted the Wart.
‘And what is your favourite bird?’ asked Archimedes, feeling that his master ought to be allowed a say.
Merlyn put his fingers together like Sherlock Holmes and replied immediately, ‘I prefer the chaffinch. My friend Linnaeus calls him coelebs or bachelor bird. The flocks have the sense to separate during the winter, so that all the males are in one flock and all the females in the other. For the winter months, at any rate, there is perfect peace.’
‘The conversation,’ observed Archimedes, ‘arose out of whether birds could talk.’
‘Another friend of mine,’ said Merlyn immediately, in his most learned voice, ‘maintains, or will maintain, that the question of the language of birds arises out of imitation. Aristotle, you know, also attributes tragedy to imitation.’
Archimedes sighed heavily, and remarked in prophetic tones, ‘You had better get it off your chest.’
‘It is like this,’ said Merlyn. ‘The kestrel drops upon a mouse, and the poor mouse, transfixed with those needle talons, cries out in agony his one squeal of K-e-e-e! Next time the kestrel sees a mouse, his own soul cries out Kee in imitation. Another kestrel, perhaps his mate, comes to that cry, and after a few million years all the kestrels are calling each other with their individual note of Kee-kee-kee.’
‘You can’t make the whole story out of one bird,’ said the Wart.
‘I don’t want to. The hawks scream like their prey. The mallards croak like the frogs they eat, the shrikes also, like these creatures in distress. The blackbirds and thrushes click like the snail-shells they hammer to pieces.
