PREFACE

RATHER MANY (but not excessively many) years ago, ere the facts and fancies embodied in this book had fairly begun to take form, I read in a preface to a work on natural history the statement that much of the matter contained in the chapters had been written in the open air. That appealed as a pleasant boast and a worthy example. How fine it would be, I thought, to produce a book, be it ever so humble, that had been written “under the splendid sky”!

But the years between brought a change of attitude. They also brought a change of circumstances. There is no hesitation in confessing, now, that practically the whole of this book has been written, subject to the demands of daily journalism, in the scarcely hallowed atmosphere of a city boarding-house!

The reader may be inclined to think that the change of attitude should be cited as a corollary, and not as a prelude, to the change from bush to city life. Really, though, the altered situation had little to do with the case. The flowers that bloom in the Spring were much more responsible. The birds that nest in the Spring were the deciding factor.

Is there any genuine bird-lover who could sit and write, more or less stolidly, while here, there, and everywhere the play of Nature was in active progress? To attempt to do so were rather like discussing Puck while Ariel held the stage. At all events, practically the only writing I have done in the bush (that is, while among the wild birds and flowers), has been to jot down odd notes — fleeting impressions and details that might be lost in a maze of incident and minor adventure before there was time to “post up” the regular note-book.

Yet I would not have it thought that the pages of this book reflect electric light rather than the sun. For the most part, at least, the knowledge here presented was never gained of schools nor books; and it is given forth in the hope that sufficient of the freshness of bush mornings remains to counteract any drabness that may have accumulated from the “ripening” influence of city and study. True enough, many of the chapters are “bookish” in the sense that verse quotations are numerous. But for this the poets are as much to blame as were the birds and the flowers in another aspect. Blessings upon all three for Springtime (and world-wide) monopolists of youthful heads and hearts!

It was a custom of mine in the frankly impressionable period — the years immediately succeeding the catapult stage — to go bushwards with camera and field glasses over shoulders and a book of good verse or prose in a pocket. Leigh Hunt recommended much the same treatment for Shakespeare on Shakespeare’s birthday, but held himself ready to drop the book at the call of living Nature. Similarly, my reading in the Australian bush has been entirely desultory. Did the birds prove unusually coy, the sunlight would play on the pages of the book for quite a long time. But there were occasions when, in a manner of speaking, the curtain rose a few minutes after the spectator was seated. Reading was usually out of the question then. Probably the book had been read before and would be read again, but it did not follow that the precise little secrets of the bush being revealed would ever be chanced upon again. Withal, a good deal of reading was accomplished in all those odd moments, and so the echoes from the poets are portions of the gleanings of early bush days. The affinity seems natural enough, too; certainly, one could say of lyric verse, equally with the songs of birds, “The music in my heart I bore long after it was heard no more.”

It is quite true, as the late John Burroughs remarked long ago, that you cannot run and read the book of Nature. Too many would-be naturalists, lured by the greenness of distant fields, rush about their own and other countries, to the neglect of the opportunity for more fraternal study near at hand. I have sought acquaintance with wild birds in many parts of Australia, but intimacy has come only by dalliance. This is the kind of thing, of course, that old Belarius, of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, preached to the two young princes whom he had kept in the forest since babyhood, causing them to reply, bitterly:

Out of your proof you speak; we, poor unfledged,

Have never wing’d from view o’ the nest. . . .

But I am far from decrying the advantages of travel to the naturalist. The point is that close knowledge of particular birds comes from concentration, and that a bush dweller who applies himself to his own locality can learn things — excellent things — that are denied men who traffic up and down and, maybe, “translate” Nature by means of mere lists and catalogues. How seldom this is conceded by the stay-at-home, much less by the traveller!

Some years ago, when attempting to get together the life-history of a certain bird, I wrote a naturalist who had studied the species, for corroboration on one or two points. The reply was a little startling. My friend had given up bird-study for the time being, it appeared, because he had “worked out” his district. Save us from such shallow beliefs! There is no such thing as working out the ornithological interest of a district. It is possible, by constant watchfulness, to achieve something like a complete record of the birds in a certain area, but the character and habits of those birds are studies that age cannot wither nor custom stale.

Sir Wm. Beach Thomas, who is at present in Australia, has given me an eloquent instance on the point. He wrote a paragraph for the London Daily Mail dealing with the song of the Blackbird, and within a day or two he received 160 letters on the subject — a host of varying opinions. There you have a bird-voice among the most familiar in the world, something as old as British history, but one that is not yet understood, not yet humanised, not yet “captured.” Who shall say, then, that the birds of any district in this young land are “worked out” on mere bowing acquaintance?

One of our leading ornithologists observed recently that Australian birds whose complete life histories had been written could be counted on the fingers of one hand. That is true enough, and it brings us again to the need for concentration in study — to the fact that there is usually more intimate natural history to be gained from an hour’s repose in a particular spot than in a whole morning of hurry. No right-thinking bird has a lasting dislike for the human figure; it is the noise and movement in association that arouse fear and resentment. Nor is the enjoyment of a bush ramble lessened by the cultivation of quietness. More than one troop of hearty boys have given me concrete evidence on the point; I have even known it to be achieved by a bevy of feminine school-teachers! But the bird observer certainly has more scope for study when alone. It is thus that most of the material contained in this book has been gathered.

No such claim is made for the story of the Paradise Parrot, of Queensland. Intervals of some years were devoted to the strange, eventful history of this bird, but the chapter itself indicates that information was not gained at first-hand. This story was included, at the last minute, in deference to the wishes of friends who desired to have it in more permanent form than that provided by a magazine.

Of the other sketches, several appeared in slightly different form in the Sydney Mail, one in Everylady’s Journal (Melbourne), and certain more technical portions in The Emu, the quarterly journal of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union. The permission to reprint is in keeping with the fine service these publications have rendered to the cause of nature study in Australia. I am also indebted to my friends, Messrs. D. W. Gaukrodger, C. H. H. Jerrard, W. G. and R. C. Harvey, and J. H. Foster (Queensland), R. T. Littlejohns, S. A. Lawrence and L. G. Chandler (Victoria), and Sid. W. Jackson (New South Wales), for the photographs which bear their names.

Brisbane, 1922

A.H.C.