Bygone birding: how mother 'willow-wren' and chicks were saved from cruel death

                                              

Eliza Brightwen - rescue mission

Extract from Inmates of My House and Garden (1895) by Eliza Brightwen:

ONE afternoon towards the end of May, I was strolling along a garden walk which skirts the open common when I overheard some boys saying: "Here's the nest, she can't fly." 

Fearing some cruelty was going on, I quickly went out to the lads and asked what they were doing.

They pointed to a tiny willow-wren sitting on the ground unable to move because her wings were glued together with birdlime.

It was the work of some bird-catcher.

He had placed the sticky birdlime on bracken stems around the poor bird's nest, which was in a tuft of grass and heather, and as she alighted with food for her young ones she was caught and held fast. 

It was a piteous sight! 

The five hungry little nestlings were cheeping for food, and the bright eyes of the mother-bird looked up at me as if appealing for help. 

The boys were as grieved as I was, but what were we to do ?

I could not let the poor victims die of starvation, so I resolved to take the willow-wren and her family home and see if I could feed the little ones and release the glued wings so as to give the mother-bird power to fly once more. 

With great pains I did succeed so far that the bird could plume her feathers, and, after a few days, she could again use her wings.

I fed the young birds, and, in this duty, the tender little mother aided me, and would even take food from my hand and put it into the gaping beaks that were always ready for small morsels of raw meat or mealworms.

On this diet, the young wrens grew and flourished until I was able one fine day to release the mother and children and rejoice in the thought that their innocent lives had been saved from a cruel death.

I can but hope that no reader of this book would ever dream of catching our songsters with birdlime. 

The willow-wren, one of the most useful of our insect-eating birds, abounds in my old garden and keeps the rose-trees free from aphids and other pests. 

It chooses very unsafe places for its nest, the smallest tuft of grass being deemed a sufficient shelter. 

One such nest, I remember, was located two years ago close to the field road where my hay carts were continually passing. 

The brave little mother seemed to have no fear, but, as a heedless footstep might unwittingly have destroyed the nest, some branches were placed round the spot for her protection, and I hope she succeeded in rearing her family.

It is a charming sight to see a party of willow-wrens methodically clearing the insects from a rose-tree. 

Like a band of tiny acrobats they flit about sideways, upside down, in and out, until every twig has been examined and all the prey secured, then, with happy chirpings, away they flit to the next tree to resume their useful operations.

The sweet, warbling song of this migrant seems a truly summer sound, for the bird seldom arrives until the middle of April, and leaves us again about the end of September.

Its note therefore suggests sunshine and flowers and the hum of insect-life.