“Lovely are the curves of the white owl13 sweeping14
??Wavy15 in the dusk lit by one large star.
Lone2 on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
??Brooding o’er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.”
We were fortunate indeed in our mise-en-scène; for the poet’s picture had realized itself before us. And, as usual, art had reacted upon nature. The cry, that was so beautiful and romantic in itself, gained an added touch of beauty and romance from the great word-painter’s exquisite16 images.
Perhaps, too, some part of the charm in the night-jar and his kind may be due to the sense that here at least we stand face to face with a genuine relic17 of the older, the wilder, and the freer England. He is a bird of the night, of the heather and the bracken, of the unbroken waste, of the unpeopled solitude. When man invades his high home, he moves afield before the intruder. Here on the great moors we hear him nightly in summer; but only when no other sound assails18 the ear, save the boom of the cockchafer, and the myriad19 hum of the flies and moths20 of dusk among the heather. He belongs, in fact, to that elder fauna21 which inhabited England before the whirr of wheels and the snort of steam drove the wild things far from us. The perky sparrow can accommodate himself without an effort to the bustle22 of towns, and can dispute for grains of corn under the horses’ hoofs23 in Cheapside; the rook can follow close the ploughman’s heels, in search of worms turned up by the share in the furrows24; but the night-jar lives aloof25 among the solitary26 fern-wastes, and flies amain before the intrusion of our boisterous27 humanity.
“Fern-owls28” the country people hereabouts call them; and very owl-like indeed they are in outer appearance, with their soft mottled plumage, all brown and grey and melting white, as is the wont29 of nocturnal or crepuscular30 creatures. But they are not owls at all by descent, for all that, being in reality big fly-hunting cousins of the swifts and the humming-birds. All birds that hawk31 after insects on the wing have a wide gaping32 mouth; the house martins have it, and the swallows, and the swifts; but in the night-jar this width of gape33 is pushed to a singular and almost grotesque34 extreme, though not of course beyond the limit laid by the needs and habits of the animal. It is the enormous mouth, fringed with its strange line of coarse bristles35 along the beak36, that has gained for our night-jar its common European name of goatsucker. And indeed, if you watch close on southern upland farms, among the Apennines or the Atlas37, you will see the night-jars at twilight hovering38 close by the udders of the goats and cattle as they lie stretched in the meadows. But they are not milking them, as the Italian peasant firmly believes; it is as friends and allies that they come, not as enemies. Peer hard through the gloom, on a moonlit evening, and you can make out at last that nocturnal flies are annoying the beasts, and that as fast as they gather the night-jar snaps them up, while the cattle seem to recognize this friendly office by never whisking their tails so long as the bird attends to them. It is a mutual39 convenience, an early form of that consorting40 for purposes of common advantage which reaches at last its highest development in the nest of ants, with their associated beetles41 and their cow-like aphides.
Here in England, our night-jar is but a summer migrant, a visitor to the moors while insects abound42; and we listen for him eagerly in warm May weather. He comes to us from South Africa, where he winters among the Zulus, or, rather, escapes the chill of winter altogether in the opposite hemisphere. For he must have insects, flying insects on the wing, and plenty of them. We welcome his first churring among the pines and bracken as a sign of summer; for he is a prudent43 bird, and seldom makes a mistake, knowing the marks of the weather well, like Mr. Robert Scott, and delaying his arrival till insects have hatched out in sufficient numbers from the cocoons44 over the heather-clad uplands. You see him but rarely, for he loves the dusk, and, though far from a timid bird, he usually alights on the ground, hardly perching on a tree, I think, except to utter his love-call. When he does perch, it is always lengthwise to the bough, not crosswise, as is the fashion with most other birds; he seems afraid of falling; and then, this position also assorts better with his passionate attitude of craning expectancy45 as he leans forward on the branch to summon his helpmate. If you disturb him from the ground, he rises with flapping wings in an awkward and noisy way, bringing his pinions46 together above his body, somewhat after the lapwing’s fashion; but when he hawks47 on the open after flies, with his big mouth agape, his long arcs of flight are equable, swift, and graceful48. Night-jars are fearless beasts; they rear their young in the open, without pretence49 or concealment50. The two veined and marbled eggs are laid boldly in some hard patch among the brake and gorse, on the bare ground, without a nest of any sort; and though they are beautifully coloured when you come to examine them in detail, they so closely imitate the soil and the dry heath around in general effect, that you may easily pass them by, even when you have marked their approximate place by disturbing the sitting mother. Few British birds, indeed, show higher and closer adaptation to special conditions than our dreamy night-jars, essential insect-hawkers of the dusk on open and treeless uplands. Their large and mysterious eyes, their gaping mouths, their straining fringe of bristles, their delicate owl-like plumage, their swift and silent flight, their agile51 movements, their eerie52 cry, their curious love-sick nature—all mark them out as marvellously modified nocturnal variants53 on the general type of the swifts and trogons. They are, in fact, specialized54 descendants of the same primitive55 ancestral form, whose bodies and souls have undergone weird56 and beautiful changes in adaptation to a wild and poetical57 life in the shades of dusk on the unpeopled moorlands. For birds of twilight have always passionate cries and passionate natures; not accident alone has given us the whip-poor-will and the nightingale.
点击收听单词发音
1 moors | |
v.停泊,系泊(船只)( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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2 lone | |
adj.孤寂的,单独的;唯一的 | |
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3 perch | |
n.栖木,高位,杆;v.栖息,就位,位于 | |
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4 bough | |
n.大树枝,主枝 | |
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5 passionate | |
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的 | |
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6 heeded | |
v.听某人的劝告,听从( heed的过去式和过去分词 );变平,使(某物)变平( flatten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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8 solitude | |
n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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9 sobbing | |
<主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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10 monotonous | |
adj.单调的,一成不变的,使人厌倦的 | |
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11 gamut | |
n.全音阶,(一领域的)全部知识 | |
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12 instinctively | |
adv.本能地 | |
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13 owl | |
n.猫头鹰,枭 | |
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14 sweeping | |
adj.范围广大的,一扫无遗的 | |
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15 wavy | |
adj.有波浪的,多浪的,波浪状的,波动的,不稳定的 | |
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16 exquisite | |
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的 | |
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17 relic | |
n.神圣的遗物,遗迹,纪念物 | |
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18 assails | |
v.攻击( assail的第三人称单数 );困扰;质问;毅然应对 | |
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19 myriad | |
adj.无数的;n.无数,极大数量 | |
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20 moths | |
n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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21 fauna | |
n.(一个地区或时代的)所有动物,动物区系 | |
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22 bustle | |
v.喧扰地忙乱,匆忙,奔忙;n.忙碌;喧闹 | |
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23 hoofs | |
n.(兽的)蹄,马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.(兽的)蹄,马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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24 furrows | |
n.犁沟( furrow的名词复数 );(脸上的)皱纹v.犁田,开沟( furrow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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25 aloof | |
adj.远离的;冷淡的,漠不关心的 | |
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26 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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27 boisterous | |
adj.喧闹的,欢闹的 | |
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28 owls | |
n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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29 wont | |
adj.习惯于;v.习惯;n.习惯 | |
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30 crepuscular | |
adj.晨曦的;黄昏的;昏暗的 | |
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31 hawk | |
n.鹰,骗子;鹰派成员 | |
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32 gaping | |
adj.口的;张口的;敞口的;多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 );张开,张大 | |
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33 gape | |
v.张口,打呵欠,目瞪口呆地凝视 | |
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34 grotesque | |
adj.怪诞的,丑陋的;n.怪诞的图案,怪人(物) | |
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35 bristles | |
短而硬的毛发,刷子毛( bristle的名词复数 ) | |
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36 beak | |
n.鸟嘴,茶壶嘴,钩形鼻 | |
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37 atlas | |
n.地图册,图表集 | |
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38 hovering | |
鸟( hover的现在分词 ); 靠近(某事物); (人)徘徊; 犹豫 | |
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39 mutual | |
adj.相互的,彼此的;共同的,共有的 | |
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40 consorting | |
v.结伴( consort的现在分词 );交往;相称;调和 | |
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41 beetles | |
n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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42 abound | |
vi.大量存在;(in,with)充满,富于 | |
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43 prudent | |
adj.谨慎的,有远见的,精打细算的 | |
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44 cocoons | |
n.茧,蚕茧( cocoon的名词复数 )v.茧,蚕茧( cocoon的第三人称单数 ) | |
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45 expectancy | |
n.期望,预期,(根据概率统计求得)预期数额 | |
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46 pinions | |
v.抓住[捆住](双臂)( pinion的第三人称单数 ) | |
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47 hawks | |
鹰( hawk的名词复数 ); 鹰派人物,主战派人物 | |
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48 graceful | |
adj.优美的,优雅的;得体的 | |
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49 pretence | |
n.假装,作假;借口,口实;虚伪;虚饰 | |
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50 concealment | |
n.隐藏, 掩盖,隐瞒 | |
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51 agile | |
adj.敏捷的,灵活的 | |
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52 eerie | |
adj.怪诞的;奇异的;可怕的;胆怯的 | |
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53 variants | |
n.变体( variant的名词复数 );变种;变型;(词等的)变体 | |
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54 specialized | |
adj.专门的,专业化的 | |
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55 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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56 weird | |
adj.古怪的,离奇的;怪诞的,神秘而可怕的 | |
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57 poetical | |
adj.似诗人的;诗一般的;韵文的;富有诗意的 | |
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