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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
NATURE ON THE ROOF.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
A NORMAN SEASCAPE.
ARE OUR COINS WEARING AWAY?
SILAS MONK.
THE RATIONALE OF HAUNTED HOUSES.
UMPIRES AT CRICKET.
PARTED.
No. 25.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1884.
NATURE ON THE ROOF.
BY RICHARD JEFFERIES,
AUTHOR OF THE ‘GAMEKEEPER AT HOME,’ ETC.
Increased activity on the housetop marks theapproach of spring and summer exactly as in thewoods and hedges, for the roof has its migrants,its semi-migrants, and its residents. When thefirst dandelion is opening on a sheltered bank,and the pale-blue field veronica flowers in thewaste corner, the whistle of the starling comesfrom his favourite ledge. Day by day it is heardmore and more, till, when the first green sprayappears on the hawthorn, he visits the roof continually.Besides the roof-tree and the chimney-top,he has his own special place, sometimes underan eave, sometimes between two gables; and asI sit writing, I can see a pair who have a ledgewhich slightly projects from the wall between theeave and the highest window. This was madeby the builder for an ornament; but my twostarlings consider it their own particular possession.They alight with a sort of half-screamhalf-whistle just over the window, flap their wings,and whistle again, run along the ledge to a spotwhere there is a gable, and with another note, riseup and enter an aperture between the slates andthe wall. There their nest will be in a littletime, and busy indeed they will be when theyoung require to be fed, to and fro the fieldsand the gable the whole day through, the busiestand the most useful of birds, for they destroythousands upon thousands of insects, and iffarmers were wise, they would never have oneshot, no matter how the thatch was pulledabout.
My pair of starlings were frequently at this ledgelast autumn, very late in autumn, and I suspectthey had a winter brood there. The starling doesrear a brood sometimes in the midst of the winter,contrary as that may seem to our general ideasof natural history. They may be called roof-residents,as they visit it all the year round; theynest in the roof, rearing two and sometimes threebroods; and use it as their club and place of meeting.Towards July, the young starlings and thosethat have for the time at least finished nesting,flo