WH Hudson's British Birds

A fascinating and readable book arrived yesterday: Birds of Britain by WH Hudson. I've owned Nature in Downland and A Shepherd's Life for years and read them many times - languid accounts of summer days strolling across the South Downs in the company of skylarks and sheep - but I was not aware that he had written a bird guide until recently.

Hudson's entertaining but informative style shines throughout the book, and he clearly knows the subjects well. On the Throstle or Song Thrush (above) he writes 'it is impossible not to feel and to express regret that so good and distinctive and old a name for this familiar bird should have been replaced by a name which is none of those things.'

And on its song: 'They are snatches and portions of melody, and he sings in a scrappy way - a note or two, a phrase or two, then a pause as if the singer paused to try to think of something to follow......[but] Browning has called him a 'wise bird' because he can

recapture
The first fine careless rapture

The book was first published in 1895, about 100 years after Gilbert White's Natural History of Selbourne, and it is interesting to note the considerable development of knowledge and belief on avian matters.

It is instructive to see the changes in status of many birds - the Bittern is described as 'formerly a common bird, it is hardly entitled to a place in this book, since it has long been extirpated as a breeding species'. The Corncrake is 'one of the commonest British birds...in southern England and Ireland it seems most numerous'. Similarly, 'Scaup are common with us in winter, and found on most parts of the coast.'

The Fulmar is reported as being 'a rare straggler in winter, and its only breeding-station in the United Kingdom is St. Kilda'.

On the Hen Harrier: 'the incessant persecution of all birds of prey by game-keepers is having its effect. it is plain to see that as British species they are being extirpated.'
The Marsh Harrier: 'is now extinct in this country, and cannot be introduced into a work on British Birds which does not include the great auk, the bustard, the spoonbill and many other species which have been exterminated in England'.

Although he comments that 'it has long been the practice of our ornithologists to regard as 'British' any species of which one specimen has been found in a wild state...' he includes brief but accurate descriptions of many of these 'stragglers', such as the three other crossbills, black-headed, little, ortolan, rustic and Lapland buntings, five rare larks and so on, showing an impressive knowledge of rarities that we (with our telescopes, cameras, communications and speed of travel) would be proud of.
WH Hudson was not even British, being from South America of US origin, so his knowledge is doubly impressive. He was a founder member of the RSPB.