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Updated: June 14, 2025
In Sark the Choughs have by no means so easy a time, as the Jackdaws outnumber them about the cliffs, and will probably eventually drive them out of the Island indeed, I am afraid they have done this in Alderney, as I did not see any when there in the summer of 1876, nor in this last summer ; and Captain Hubbach writes me word he has seen none in Alderney himself this year . I, however, saw some there in previous visits, but now for some reason, probably the increase of Jackdaws, the Choughs appear to me nearly, if not quite, to have deserted that Island.
A sail of an hour twice a day was in itself a great rest for me, and combined with this was a commodious, well-furnished house; fine stable; ample grounds, handsomely laid out; good kitchen garden, planted; plenty of fruit; gardener, and Alderney cows on the place, and best of all a fine bathing beach at the foot of the lawn, with the open Sound before us.
One morning perhaps he would come in to talk with the squire about the ash wood they were going to cut in the ensuing winter, or about the oak bark which had not been paid for. Or it might be the Alderney cow or the poultry at the Home Farm, or a few fresh tiles on the roof of the pig-sty, which was decaying. A cart wanted a new pair of wheels or a shaft.
He led the way out of the kitchen garden, and round by a field where the Doctor's Alderney cows were grazing, then through a shrubbery to the back of the thatched cottage I had dimly seen as the fly drove by the previous night. "Left, right! Three quarters half face. As you never were. Left counter-jumper march! Halt stare at pease!"
They have none of them ever cared greatly for Alderney, and they always speak of it as a remote, unfriendly, melancholy, and slow little place, lacking the gem-like beauty and joyous vitality of Sark. But then one's outlook is always coloured by one's inlook, and an overcast mind sees all things shadowed.
I have seen them fishing along the shore in Guernsey, Herm, Alderney, and the rocky islands north of Herm, but I have never seen or heard of an egg being found in either of the Islands, nor have I ever seen anything that bore the most remote resemblance to the nest of a Heron. Mr.
Besides these islands the Puffins breed in Alderney itself, and on Burhou, where, however, their eggs are robbed nearly as much as in the islands north of Herm, especially the eggs of those who choose holes in the soft earth.
This ball belonged to the lighthouse-tower erected on the highest peak of the Casquettes, a terrible group of rocks jutting out into the Channel, just off the French coast hard by Alderney, some six miles to the north-west of which island they lie.
Fieldfares and Mistletoe Thrushes usually sell at fourpence each, the rest at fourpence a couple. Professor Ansted mentions it in his list, but confines it to Guernsey and Sark. This is certainly not now the case, as I have seen it nearly as numerous in Alderney and Herm as any of the other Islands. There is a specimen in the Museum. SONG THRUSH. Turdus musicus, Linnaeus.
This, by some, may be called ostentation be it so; it was the way in which I discovered my pride; and I trust, at all events, that it was equally laudable with the generous boon of our reverend doctor and justice, of the "Old Alderney Cow."
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