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Updated: June 19, 2025
The wind sang softly in the cedars, and the water sang among the eaves: the sea-birds sang as they streamed out into the ocean, and the land-birds as they built among the boughs; and the air was so full of song that it stirred St. Brandan and his hermits, as they slumbered in the shade; and they moved their good old lips, and sang their morning hymn amid their dreams.
A low, thick bank of drifting fog lay along the sea, in-shore of us, which all believed to be the sweat of the land, and thought no more of; though none wished to enter it, for that is a coast where foul airs rise, and through which the gulls and land-birds refuse to fly.
No doubt with birds which roam over the open ocean, the males and females could find each other much more easily, when made conspicuous either by being perfectly white or intensely black; so that these colours may possible serve the same end as the call-notes of many land-birds.
Almost every year, one or two land-birds are blown across the whole Atlantic Ocean, from North America to the western shores of Ireland and England; but seeds could be transported by these rare wanderers only by one means, namely, by dirt adhering to their feet or beaks, which is in itself a rare accident.
Sea-weed had washed up and clung there; sea-birds had made nests there; land-birds and the winds had carried seeds there, which had sprung up; trunks of trees had been cast there by the sea; lizards, insects, and little animals came with the trees, and were the first inhabitants; and, behold! it was an island." "What did you say then?" asked Freddy.
Sometimes a few weary land-birds that have strayed from their homeward way, skim over the ocean, or rest upon the masts; how they maintain themselves on the wing cannot be conjectured, but certain it is, they have been seen on the trackless ocean, when no point of land was within hundreds of miles.
I did not anchor here nor send my boat ashore; there being no appearance of getting anything on that spot of sand besides birds that were good for little: though had I not been in haste I would have taken some of them. So I made the best of my way to Timor; and on the 11th in the afternoon we saw 10 small land-birds, about the bigness of larks, that flew away north-west.
Even ducks, though living so much in water, dip and scatter cleansing showers over their backs, and shake and preen their feathers as carefully as land-birds. Watching small singers taking their morning baths is very interesting, particularly when the weather is cold.
They are easily killed by salt-water, and it does not appear probable that young worms or their egg- capsules could be carried in earth adhering to the feet or beaks of land-birds. Moreover Kerguelen Land is not now inhabited by any land-bird. In this volume we are chiefly concerned with the earth cast up by worms, and I have gleaned a few facts on this subject with respect to distant lands.
But any interested person can acquaint himself with most of our song-birds by keeping in mind a few general divisions, and observing the characteristics of each. By far the greater number of our land-birds are either warblers, vireos, flycatchers, thrushes, or finches. The warblers are, perhaps, the most puzzling. These are the true Sylvia, the real wood-birds.
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