Love’s Meinie： Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds
Lecture 3. The Dabchicks: 4.b. Titania Inconstans. Changeful Fairy
John Ruskin
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_ LECTURE III. THE DABCHICKS: IV.B. TITANIA INCONSTANS. CHANGEFUL FAIRY
_Phalaropus Fulicarius._ (_Coot-like Phalarope--Gould._)
114. I think the epithet 'changeful' prettier, and, until we know what a coot _is_ like, more descriptive, than 'coot-like'; the bird having red plumage in summer, and gray in winter, while the coot is always black. It is a little less pretty and less amiable than its sister fairy; otherwise scarcely to be thought of but as a variety, both of them being distinguished from the coot, not only by color, but by their smaller size;--(they eight inches long, it sixteen)--and by the slender beaks, the coot having a thick one, half-way to a puffin's.
And here, once for all,--for I see I have taken no note yet of the beaks or bills of my dabchicks,--I will at once arrange a formula of the order of questions which it will be proper to ask, and get answered, concerning any bird, in the same order always, so that we shall never miss anything that we ought to think of. And I find these questions will naturally and easily fall into the following twelve:
1. Country, and scope of migration.
2. Food.
3. Form and flight.
4. Foot.
5. Beak and eye.
6. Voice and ear.
7. Temper.
8. Nest.
9. Eggs.
10. Brood.
11. Feathers.
12. Uses in the world.
It may be thought that I have forced--and not fallen into--my number 12, by packing the faculties of sight and hearing into by-corners. But the expression of a bird's head depends on the relation of eye to beak, as the getting of its food depends on their practical alliance of power; and the question, for instance, whether peacocks and parrots have musical ears, seems to me not properly debatable unless with due respect to the quality of their voices. It is curious, considering how much, one way or another, we are amused or pleased by the chatter and song of birds, that you will scarcely find in any ornithic manual more than a sentence, if so much, about their hearing; and I have not myself, at this moment, the least idea where a nightingale's ears are! But see Appendix, p. 122.
I retain, therefore, my dodecahedric form of catechism as sufficiently clear; and without binding myself to follow the order of it in strictness, if there be motive for discursory remark, it will certainly prevent my leaving any bird insufficiently distinguished, and enable me to arrange the collected statements about it in the most easily compared order.
115. We will try it at once on this second variety of the Titania, of which I find nothing of much interest in my books, and have nothing discursive myself to say.
1. Country. Arctic mostly; seen off Greenland, in lat. 68 deg., swimming among icebergs three or four miles from shore. Abundant in Siberia, and as far south as the Caspian. Migratory in Europe as far as Italy, yet always rare. (Do a few only, more intelligently curious than the rest, or for the sake of their health, travel?)
2. Food. Small thin-skinned crustacea, and aquatic surface-insects.
3. Form and flight. Stout, for a sea-bird; and they don't care to fly, preferring to _swim_ out of danger. Body 7 to 8 inches long; wings, from carpal joint to end, 4-3/4,--say 5. These quarters of inches, are absurd pretenses to generalize what varies in every bird. 8 inches long, by 10 across the wings open, is near enough. In future, the brief notification 8 x 10, 5 x 7, or the like, will enough express a bird's inches, unless it possess decorative appendage of tail, which must be noted separately.
4. Foot. Chestnut-leaved in front toes, the lobes slightly serrated on the edges. Hind toe without membrane. Color of foot, always black.
5. Beak. Long, slender, straight. (How long? Drawn as about a fifth of the bird's length--say an inch, or a little over.) Upper mandible slightly curved down at the point. In Titania arctica, the beak is longer and more slender.
6. Voice. A sharp, short cry, not conceived by me enough to spell any likeness of it.
7. Temper. Gentle, passing into stupid, (it seems to me); one, in meditative travel, lets itself be knocked down by a gardener with his spade.
8. Nest. Little said of it, the bird breeding chiefly in the North. Among marshes, it is of weeds and grass; but among icebergs, of what?
9. Eggs. Pear-shape; narrow ends together in nest; never more than four.
10. Brood. No account of.
11. Feathers. Mostly gray, passing into brown in summer, varied with white on margin. Reddish chestnut or bay bodice--well oiled or varnished.
12. Uses. Fortunately, at present, unknown. _