LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA
SANDIMO

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

By
MARCUS WOODWARD

Author of

" Country Contentments "
« The Woodcraft Trail "
Week-End Walks Round London "

" Near London "

" The New Book of Days "

etc.

GEOFFREY BLES

22 SUFFOLK STREET PALL MALL S.W.I

Printed in Great Britain at

The Westminster Press

41 1 a Harrow Road

London, W.o

TO

And rf babbled of green fields.

HENRY V

VI

PREFACE

TH E Arcadian notes here following are a sifting
from several thousands which ran a course in The
Morning Post, where they were printed anonymously in
a crowded column of Varia, edited at the time by one
of the sternest, most just and most scholarly literary
critics of our day, the Post's Literary Editor, Mr. E. B.
Osborn — to whom the writer begs to offer his humble
guerdon of a Dedication.

Anonymously printed, in accordance with Post tra-
ditions— trying to distil a breath of country air among
the other paragraphs about all the talk of the Town —
these Arcadian echoes here and there struck responsive
chords; and the writer treasures a casketful of letters
saying that they had given pleasure to some unfortunates
" in cities pent," and asking, Would the notes someday
be collected ? With diffidence, in answer, a tithe of the
printed notes is here offered as a book.

A sonorous passage of Milton has come into the
writer's mind, proclaiming that in those vernal seasons
when the air is calm and pleasant, it were " an injury
and sullenness against Nature " not to go out, see her
riches, and partake in her rejoicing; and the thought
follows that some who may read this book, knowing
how often they offend Nature by staying indoors, may
look upon their reading as a penance and atonement.

MARCUS WOODWARD

Vll

CONTENTS

J A N U A R Y

Dawn of the Year page 3

Tokens 7

The Shepherd 9

Songs before Spring 1 1

Woodland Revellers 14

By River and Pond 14

FEBRUARY

Spring Prophets 17

The Truce 21

The Spring Fever 21

On the Marshes 25

The Lane to Spring 26

MARCH

March Marriages 31

Would A- Wooing Go 35

The Truants 38

At Heaven's Gate 40

In Wood and Mead 41

APRIL

Proud Pied April 45

The Summer Birds 48

Familiar Birds 51

Bridal Days 53

Country Characters 55

CONTENTS
MAY

May's Anodyne page 59

Flowers and Song 61

Voice of the Turtle 63

In the Coverts 64

Night Birds 65

Swallow-Time 67

Chatterboxes 68

A Ferocious Commoner 69

JUNE

Bird Notes 73

Attar of Hay 76

Down the Lane 78

Moths 79

Tree Birds 79

Water Sprites 82

To the West 83

JULY

The Dog-Days 87

Meadowland 90

In Shadiest Covert 91

Over the Hills 92

Hedgerow Pictures 93

Young Things 94

The Moat 97

Children of Light 97

AUGUST

Matins and Evensong, 101

Harvest Tide 103

Muir Fowl 105

CONTENTS

Sea Thoughts page 107

The Downs so Free 108

A Woodlander 109

The Passing of Summer 109

SEPTEMBER

Thoughts on Hunting 115

Harvest-Home 1 1 8

September's Birds 119

September's Flowers 122

Fly- by-Nights 124

Doomsday 125

The Keeper's Cares 126

OCTOBER

Artful Dodgers 129

Songs and Revels 130

Sporting Ways and Days 133

Owls — and Others 135

Autumn Tones 137

Birds of Passage 140

The Fall 141

NO VEMB ER

Songs of Cheer 145

The Year's Sunset 148

Woodland Folk 148

Winter Guests 149

Shore Birds 153

The Hibernators 155

A Privateer 156

A Farmer's Friends and Foes 157

CONTENTS
DECEMBER

Birds and the Man page 161

Winter Sketches 162

Garden Birds 165

Bird Travellers 166

December Characters 168

Christmas Decorations 171

JANUARY

CLAD all in White, as the Earth looks with the
Snow, blowing his nails ; in his Left Arm a Billet,
the Sign of Aquarius standing by his side.

DAWN OF THE YEAR

LAST night we met several neighbours in the village,
gathered to hear the church clock signal
New the birth of a new year. As the silence was

Year broken by the first midnight note, the

Greetings firing of a distant gun was faintly heard. At
once came an answering challenge from a
pheasant in the park across the road ; possibly he thought
poachers were abroad. From the farmyard by the village
horsepond came an excited gabbling, a ludicrous chorus,
from a few vigilant geese, as if joyously surprised to find
themselves alive to greet a new year. A white owl drifted
over the pond, screaming as though he embodied the
lost spirit of the dying year. A shrill yapping bark came

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

from a fox in the park with the last stroke of midnight.
" Bad cess to 'e," muttered an old farmer, but we did
not know if he cursed the fox, or the year that was dead.

ON New Year's Day, the old story goes, the ravens
choose the sites of their nests, first token
The Lane that we have set foot on the long lane to
to Spring April. There are other tokens on all hands,
for all to see: fern-like sprays of parsley
making delicate greenery in the hedge-banks, new prim-
rose leaves, buds swelling on the sallows, and, in a
warm corner, a hazel-bush lighting the sombre hedge
with greenish-yellow catkins, already beginning to
shake loose. The new year's curtain goes up to the
hearty singing of thrushes. A pair of partridges is
seen, feeding apart from the covey; two cock pheasants
are disturbed at a duel ; and two jackdaws fly together,
like lovers, to a promising, ivy-mantled hollow tree. Even
the cock sparrow's vulgar chirp has an amorous ring.

" RAVEN trees," no doubt, were so called from the
faithful way ravens return to the same nest
The year after year ; the old names cling to the

Raven's trees, as in the New Forest, though now the
Eyrie doves and starlings reign in the ravens'

stead. Where, in Highland fastnesses, rem-
nants of the sable brotherhood survive, the hardy birds
will be sitting on their green eggs next month, undis-
mayed though snow blizzards rage. Lord Lilford's story
of his pet raven, Grip, comes to mind — how Grip was
deserted by his bride before she laid eggs in the nest
they had built, and how he then carried many stones
up to the nest — an expression of despair, or else a hint

DAWN OF THE YEAR

to the truant of her duty, thoughtfully prepared against
her return.

WITH the New Year, foxes seek their mates, and on
still nights the woods ring and ring again
The Fox's with the short, threefold bark of the dog
Idyll fox in love, and the shrill answering yelps

of the vixen, like the scream of a child.
Foxes begin their courtship betimes, since March and
April are the months of good omen for the birth of
cubs. A green Christmas, followed by a mild New
Year, sets the vixen prospecting for a nursery earth,
and within a few weeks she will be one of our most
secretive wild animals, passing her days underground.
Meantime, the young foxes, now almost in their prime,
must fight for their mates among themselves. Some
will challenge the veterans; and will be given sharp
lessons in the game of love, while the vixen, the cause
of the trouble, looks on without concern.

WE were amused to-day by hearing a story about
" Rambler," a hound-puppy " at walk "
A Hound's at a little inn, who has been enjoying the
First adventure of his young life, for he has

Hunt entered himself to fox-hunting. On a

sporting farmer's land he found a drain
always favoured in January by courting foxes. Built of
ten-inch pipes, it is V-shaped, the arms eight yards
long, and there is a roomy nursery-chamber at the
angle. The pipes are laid unevenly, to stop any charge
of shot which might be fired into the chamber. As
Rambler poked his nose into one entrance, a red head
looked out at the other, turning this way and that, and

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

out bolted Mus' Reynolds, followed by his enchanter.
Rambler enjoyed a wild hunt, which may be a sweet
memory after the years of hard schooling in store for
him, when he returns to the kennels.

THE honour of putting forth the first green leaf of the
new year belongs to the wild honeysuckle,
The as was noted by Coventry Patmore, who

Year's tells how, " In urgence of sweet life," it
First Leaf disdains snow, frost and time, to put on
Spring's livery in mid- Winter. Honeysuckle
was ever a poet's favourite, as witness the many
references in Shakespeare, including, " Ah, thou
honeysuckle villain! " Woodbine being a favourite
poet's word for honeysuckle, a puzzle is presented by
the line, " So doth the woodbine and the sweet honey-
suckle gently entwist." Some hold that the words stood
for the flower and the stem respectively; others that
woodbine meant convolvulus. But the poet also has
the expression, " luscious woodbine," which would
hardly apply to convolvulus: unless he here used the
old adjective, " lustious," derived from " lusty."

THE young leaves can unfurl early, since they have no

scaly wraps to protect them through

The winter. As the woodbine spirally climbs a

Rathe young tree, it develops wiry, iron-hard

Woodbine branches, and grips so tenaciously as to

become part of the tree's wood, taking the

shape of an entwining snake, and cutting a deep groove.

Any straight, grooved portion of a stem is likely some

day to make a cherished curiosity of a walking-stick.

It loves to climb walls, whence its old name, Caprifole,

6

TOKENS

from its goat-like hold of rocks. As it climbs it turns
with the sun. The pale-green, egg-shaped leaves, now
pushing out in pairs, are heralds of better days, no less
than the first purple-blotched leaves of the wild arums.

THE era of the primulas began with the New Year, and
many a cottage garden can yield a nosegay
The now of the auricula, oxlip, primrose — the

Prime poet's " rathe primrose," that dies forsaken

Flowers or unmarried — and the cowslip, or at least
that hybrid offspring, the polyanthus. Of
these the auricula alone is a foreigner, one that vies
with gentians and pinks in Alpine fields, but it is a
very old English cottager, with a history in our gardens
going back three hundred years. Its name is a hard one,
but the florists have endowed varieties with some
poetical titles, like Celtic King and Erin's Queen.
Polyanthus is another hard name for a children's
favourite, but cottage children recognize one sort as
the Hose-in-hose, each flower having another set
within. These primulas play at Catch-as-catch-can with
Spring, throwing out flowers whenever they can escape
Winter's grip.

TOKENS

ROUGH bits of furzy waste where linnets presently will

be nesting are now all ablaze with the

The gold of gorse. Goldsmith seemed to reprove

Golden the flowers when he spoke of them as being

Lining so " unprofitable gay," since their appeal

to the bees is wasted in January. But the

flowers are generally praised as economists in Summer

from the way the corolla remains open after being

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

visited by one bee, with a hanging keel in sign that no
other bee need enter — thus saving the bees' valuable
time, so that other blossoms benefit. This winter-
blooming of the " vuzz " is a token, as an old-time poet
sang, that " Beauty liveth still " — the golden lining of
a drear January day.

VERDANT tokens of Spring are to be found now in pro-
fusion on what seems the barrenest place,
The Old the mighty rocks of a stone hedge of a
Stone Devon lane. The effect of fresh greenery

Hedge and pulsing life is largely due to the curious
leaves of pennywort, in all sizes from baby
round ones an eighth of an inch across to those
measured by full inches. They densely fringe the rocks
all round, like a living cement, jostling each other in
clustered hundreds. Luxuriant, indeed, is the new life
of these old stones, with their ferns, mosses, lichens,
minute cresses, and spreading foxglove leaves, while
here and there the great-hearted Ragged Robin is in
bloom. Devon has days in January which might have
been stolen from a genial March, and in the sheltered
lanes the bleakest day is redeemed by this living
garment of the rocks.

ON Dartmoor, when sudden frost freezes the moorland

mists and a film of ice covers every spray

A Silver of heather and fern, the natives say: " The

Frost ammil is on " — a curious phrase for the

winter phenomenon known to others as a

" silver frost." The learned have traced " ammil " to

enamel, pointing out that enamelling was an art much

practised down to the sixteenth century. It is somewhat

8

THE SHEPHERD

remarkable that the familiar word of olden days should
have survived while its significance is forgotten. Yet
the word is most appropriate to a crystallized Dartmoor,
when every blade of grass is found fitted into a most
delicate scabbard of ice, and all the leaves and berries
of the holly-tree dance and sparkle in the sun.

THE first red flower of the year is the red dead-nettle,
now in bloom, the powerless nettle, its
January's name being a corruption of the Saxon
Bouquet " Deffenettil" ; it is still known in some
parts as dumb-nettle. Besides the never-
bloomless furze, jasmine, and the rash primrose,
January's bouquet has dandelion and daisy, shepherd's
purse, chickweed, and groundsel that was hailed by
old Nicholas Culpepper as " a gallant and universal
medicine." The Christmas rose has allies in the shrub-
bery in green and stinking hellebores; there, also, the
periwinkle blooms. A few forward marsh marigolds,
buttercups and lesser celandines may be found; and
always in January we come to some bank where the
nodding violet grows and blows.

THE SHEPHERD

ONCE again, in our walks abroad, we see the age-old

picture of the shepherd with a new-born

Lambing lamb in his arms. No matter how crusty

Days an old fellow, he turns motherly at lambing-

time, and there is much need of mothering

among his silly sheep. Days and nights of ceaseless

labour and vigil are now the shepherd's lot, ruling out

of court the old charge of shepherd's idleness, laid

9

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

especially against the men of Salisbury Plain ; of whom
the story is told that when resting, if asked the way
across the Plain, rather than rise to point it out, they
would but stretch a leg, saying: " Theck woy," or
" Thuck woy."

OLD shepherds remember when flocks were counted by
the aid of notched sticks — tallies. When
The scoring lambs, as they were born, different

Shepherd's cuts signified single lambs, twins, and
Tally triplets. Also, when dividing lambs from

ewes, notches were cut for each score. An
old South Down shepherd has a story of a sheep-dog
so clever that he could count five-score sheep as well
as his master. As the flock, some two thousand strong,
streamed into their fold, the shepherd would cry at
intervals, " Five score! " But before he could utter the
words, as the hundredth sheep passed, the dog would
spring in front of the fold door, thus checking the stream
for a moment, until the shepherd had time to notch the
score on his tally-stick. Only those who know sheep-
dogs intimately would credit the story.

DANGERS are braved by the Highland shepherd, and

hardships endured, undreamt of by the

The Southerner. His enemies encompass him:

Highland at his going out and his coming in he hears

Shepherd the scream of the eagle, croak of raven,

caw of grey-crow, or sharp bark of fox. In

snow blizzards or mountain mists he may fail to reach

home at night, and with his hungry dog must couch

among the rocks, plaid for sole blanket.

10

SONGS BEFORE SPRING

SONGS BEFORE SPRING

A CROWD of gay birds means much in a flowerless
January garden, and where goldfinches
A Charm haunt a neighbourhood the gardener may
of be well rewarded if he plants ornamental

Goldfinches thistles, or hemp, or flax, as a goldfinch
lure. Time was when a pair of these finches
nested in every orchard, where in spring the courting
cock would be seen spreading his wings to show off
their gold to admiring eyes; but now the " gool finch,"
to use one old rustic gardener's name, is unfortunately
a very local bird. Winter flocks, gay in feathers — the
hens as bright as the cocks and as lively in voice and
motion — were called by our fathers " a charm of gold-
finches " — just as a rookery was described as " a building
of rooks," and a starling pack " a murmuration."

CANARY-HUED yellow hammers are among the showiest
of our hedge-birds, and do much to
Yellow brighten the dull waysides of January,
Yowley especially as now the last year's nestlings
are putting on their bright coats. They court
and pair betimes, and will be singing within a few weeks,
and it is further to their credit that they sing their
monotonous chant for a remarkably long period, from
February until far into August. It seems a pity, by the
way, that the name, yellow hammer, should be estab-
lished, with its superfluous " h " (being derived from
the German "goldammer," or gold bunting), when
we have a variety of provincial names, like yellow
yowley, yeldring, goldie, and yellow stammer, from the
stuttering song. In the North, this bird has incurred the
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superstitious dislike of the peasantry, and is called
" Devil's bird," in accordance with an old rhyme
suggesting that a " yellow yorling " will —
Drink a drap o' the deil's blood
Every May morning.

IT were hard to say which is the first true song of
Spring, since thrush and blackbird, wren,
Spring's hedge-sparrow, and robin uplift their
Bellman voices in mid- Winter. Probably the place
of honour would be given by many to the
first notes of the chiffchaff, as he calls his own name
in the woods on a day of March; no warbler has a
simpler song, but it is full of pleasant ideas of Spring,
and tells of violets and anemones. The mistle-thrush,
piping so rarely, is well called " Spring's Trumpeter,"
and the great tit, " Spring's Bellman." As the hedge-
sparrow sings much the same tune as the wren, so the
chiffchaff and the great tit share a common song-motive,
though there is more vigour in the great tit's ringing
" whetstone " note, like the sound of a scythe being
sharpened, or like the ringing of a bell clamorous for
the rise of Spring's curtain.

THE keeper of a nature-diary might make some curious

records of the highest number of different

A birds heard singing together at one time,

January or within a space of two or three minutes.

Chorus To give one humble January record, we

heard in harmonious chorus in our garden

this week blackbird and song- and mistle-thrush all

singing in full-throated ease ; the great tit, starting the

echoes with its two ringing notes; the chaffinch in

12

SONGS BEFORE SPRING

merry mood; and Jenny-wren. Over the garden's
frontiers a wood-pigeon was crooning its pleasant
" Coo coo hoo, coo hoo," in tune with the Spring feeling
of the January day. The flute-like call of a nuthatch also
rang through the garden, and a starling whistled finely
from a weather-vane. It was as if all were uniting to
practise Spring's overture.

THE lark finds good cover even in close-reaped stubbles ;

that there may be hundreds in one lifeless-
The looking field is made clear when some

Laverock smart terrier or lurcher has found the joys

of lark-hunting, and races about intent on
putting up every bird. The cover is enough to give
them security, and they may be seen standing erect to
watch the dog, then crouching awhile before drifting
away from under his nose as he rushes upon them like
a fury. In mild Januaries the larks practise the songs
they will bestow upon us so abundantly through the
year, singing for nine out of the twelve months, in the
Summer singing by starshine, soaring to find the sun
long before he has risen.

THE January singing of skylarks seems to be much in-
spired by jealousy. As two sing aloft, below
Songs of in the clover there may be a fair hen listening
Jealousy in critical judgment. Philomel's voice is a
lure to other birds, which draw near with
challenging songs ; the thrush will give what seems like
a mocking imitation of some of the matchless phrases.
One day last May a foraging blackcap was singing
softly, humming a tune, as it were — that murmurous
" inward melody " — when a blackbird whistled from the

13

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

brake. Instantly the little warbler stopped its busy hunt-
ing, and in full voice jealously poured out a torrent of
wood- wild notes ; but the blackbird sang on undismayed.

WOODLAND REVELLERS

THE sight of a lively party of six squirrels at woodland
revels suggested that the thoughts of the
The young members were turning lightly to

Squirrels love. In a mild Winter this may be the time
Fancy when the family party breaks up, having
kept together since the three or four
youngsters were born in the early Summer last year. It
was as pretty a woodland picture as could be seen of
wild animal life, as the squirrels chased one another
about the trees in highest spirits. The same breaking of
family links has been going on among the partridges,
who are always in high feather when their thoughts
turn lovewards: every gallant cock then spoils for a
fight, though it may be merely his own familiar sister
that he espouses. A cold spell quickly puts an end to
his courting ardour.

BY RIVER AND POND

TROUT may be cold-blooded, but are hot-headed

courtiers at this season when spawning,

Lovelorn savagely butting rivals and sending scales

Trout flying from backs in battles in which the

attacker always seems victor. But in more

or less harmony the pairs select the beds wherein the

female buries her eggs from three to six inches deep —

a thousand eggs for each pound weight of her body.

Young trout, meantime, wait to devour eggs washed

BY RIVER AND POND

from the " redd." It will be some three months before
the alevins hatch — tasty tit-bits for eels.

THE miller's cat, if not a serious rival to otter and seal,
is often a skilled angler, and will dart on a
Four- trout lying in shallow water. One has been

footed known to swim to an island in midstream,
Anglers keeping an eye open for fish on the way.
Moles, so essentially of the earth, and
earthy, are fast swimmers. The river-side rat leads a
semi-aquatic life, is a good diver, and will take duck-
lings that are afloat. And the vegetarian water vole may
do a little fishing at times. In Norfolk Broads stoats
have been seen to dart on fish in shallow water. Weasels
that hunt mice in marshes are as ready to swim after
water voles as to climb trees on bird-nesting forays.
The cat's love of fish has been held to suggest ancestral
angling habits.

A LIVELY pond-dweller is the water-boatman — so
called, though its first name seems super-
The fluous; and children are always amused to

Boatman find that its flattish, yellowish-brown body,
half-an-inch long, floats upside down, with
its back-ridge as keel, and is rowed by long, hairy hind-
legs, flattened like paddles. This accomplished hunter
can dive, but the body is so buoyant that it floats at
once to the surface. At will, the boatman can turn
aeronaut, unfurling the antennae which are packed away
when in water. And it is a fiddler of sorts, making
music by striking the forelegs together. It is kept dry
in the pond by a coating of fine down, which holds the
air, so that when under water it shines like silver.

15

c

FEBRUARY

LOATHED in a dark Side-colour, carrying
in his Right hand the Sign Pisces.

SPRING PROPHETS

THE pipistrelle — the countryman's " fluttermouse " —
ranks among our minor Spring prophets
A when it appears on a February evening — •

Harbinger sometimes in broad daylight — hawking up
and down a village street to sample the gnat-
supply, and it attracts, perhaps, more attention than
the first swallow. One wonders that it can find anything
worth eating; but there are few birds at present to
dispute its fishing-rights. It will be different when the
martins come home to the village, and the little dusky-
grey, spotted flycatcher, rivals against which the bat
will occasionally make spiteful demonstrations. It is not
uncommon for a pipistrelle to attack and buffet, with its
leathern wings, an innocent flycatcher, showing the
while every symptom of extreme jealousy of one it con-
siders as a trespasser on its own preserves. It is strange
17 c

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

that so vampire-like a creature should have been en-
dowed with so musical a name, an uncanny bird-animal
that sleeps upside down, can walk without feet, and
fly without feathers, and even see though blinded.

NATURE has a law that if moths must need fly in Winter
their females shall be wingless, for their
A Minor greater safety, but the law now relaxes, and
Prophet one of the first to take advantage of this is
the small eggar. How it forces a way from
the compact, hard, seamless cocoon which the cater-
pillar fashioned is a matter of never-ending wonder.
Like the Amazonian hen sparrow-hawk, the female is
larger than her smart little brownish-hued male. She
is an arch deceiver, and, as she clings to the twig
whereon she has arranged her eggs, may easily be
passed over as a dry hawthorn-leaf. These moths also
are among the minor Spring prophets.

WINTER'S passing may be first announced, and Spring's
tocsin first sounded, by the laughing cry of
The the green woodpecker. In records kept for

Yaffle ten years the exultant note has been heard
on three occasions on the first day of
January. To-day it rings with as heartening a message
as voice of mistle-thrush or great tit. That " Yaffa,
yaffa, yaffle " note is known in London, or so near that
the caller may pass for a Cockney. The bird certainly
is a conservative in its love of home; and old-time
writers tell of woodpeckers occupying the same hole
for their nests twenty and thirty years in succession.

18

SPRING PROPHETS

FOR weeks past the " Tu whit " and the " Tu whoo "
of the brown owls have told their love-
The story. Courting rites begin with the new

Moping year, and some pairs are now nesting. The
Owls head of the family will call for a long time

on end after a set fashion, from one tree:
first uttering a long, single hoot, then, after a pause,
running ten or twelve " hoohs " together into one
long-drawn, bubbling note, and again, after another
pause, uttering the trumpet-like call. One owl answers
another like an echo ; so that a benighted wayfarer may
be cheered by their mellow hootings all the way home.

THE owl called " little " is famed for its varied reper-
toire of notes, of mewing, barking, and
The Little bleating sort, and for a cry like the dis-
Owl tressful voice of a rabbit in a snare ; but it

has also a long-drawn love-call of musical
quality. The four or five white eggs are laid in all sorts
of situations besides holes in trees; one little owl we
know has laid for two seasons under an overturned
sheep-trough, and another favoured a rabbit's burrow
until the rabbits turned crusty. The gamekeeper much
mistrusts these quaintest of owls; one of which, for
any crimes it may have committed against other birds,
lately paid the supreme penalty when a sparrow-hawk
selected it for its dinner.

Now the blackbird whistles again, in his lazy way — bar
upon bar of flute-like music. When singing
The thus early he pays a rare compliment to the

Mellow Clerk of the Weather. Most good judges
Merle find that in quality his note excels the

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

thrush's. A starling or a sedge- warbler may imitate easily
many thrush-notes, but hardly the blackbird's whistle.
His ludicrous alarm-note is another matter. A black-
bird was disturbed in some sedges, and went away with
the usual terrified cackling. Instantly a sedge-warbler
echoed the cry in mocking tones, just as if he would
say, " Any fool can do that! "

THE tennis-lawn in early morning is the scene of the
blackbird duel, and the affair is carried
Blackbird through punctiliously. The aggressor, re-
Duellists splendent in shining black, with orange
spear, advances, with hops and runs, from
the holly hedge where he will nest, stopping at striking
distance of his rival. He, too, cuts a gallant figure, but
has a faint heart, and retreats a few yards, and again at
the next demonstration. When he is driven to the edge
of the lawn the challenger falls back to the holly fort.
Whereupon his rival follows. All begins again and the
affair goes on by the hour, morning after morning,
without the loss of a feather.

BLACKBIRDS and thrushes have much in common, and
live on the friendliest terms, yet have
Mavis habits as different as their contralto and
and soprano songs. The thrush has by far the

Merle longer song-period, and has been singing

all the Winter through, while most black-
birds still withhold their richer lay. The blackbird has
the more skulking disposition, but if annoyed by cat
or weasel shows a finer fighting spirit than his cousin.
The thrush is the first to nest, and is now prospecting
for sites in the evergreens.
20

THE SPRING FEVER

MANY gardens now harbour thrushes' nests with eggs ;

but the gardener who does not hold with the
The thrush tribe may not tell of the early nest,

Nesting or its fate. The thrush is famed for the
Thrush variety of the pitches selected for its Spartan

cradle, with a clay lining that must be hard
indeed for the naked young ; we find nests on the ground
and high in trees, in cabbages, under railway-trucks,
below trees where sparrow-hawks "nest, or in the sides of
wheat-stacks. Old nests commonly become the dining-
tables of mice ; and they may be used by other birds as
dormitories or as a foundation for their own nests.

THE TRUCE
THE gamekeeper tells how the wild cock pheasant

knows the day of his emancipation. He puts
The on a swaggering air, as if conscious of his

Pheasant's warrant to pass without hindrance down
Warrant the woodland rides. As his strength is, so

will be his harem. And he will have for
devoted bodyguard the self-same keeper who, from
October ist to February ist, set a high price on his
head. The keeper has never been in fear of killing too
many cocks. Even if February should find him with
only hens left, cocks would still find out his coverts,
though they came from great distances.

THE SPRING FEVER

ON St. Valentine's Day the birds mate. The good

Bishop of the birds will find that many in

The Birds' his diocese await his blessing, like the

Wedding rooks, to whom tradition more especially

Day assigns this day for their nuptials. The

21

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

hares might attract St. Valentine, too, for we note they
are afflicted already with March madness. Again we see
the ludicrous ritual of their courtship, the familiar
picture of the Jacks, reared on hind legs, waltzing and
boxing, then perchance the sight of the conqueror of
a duel stealing softly to the side of the fair charmer.

THE great tit, in his fine primrose waistcoat with the
broad black stripe, has taken a wife, or, at
The any rate, has appointed himself the courtier

Dandy of a former mate. His ringing love-call of
Tit two repeated notes tells the world of the

happy event, and he shows off his bride at
the bird-table. In the rout there gathered, of lesser
tits, nuthatches, and finches in variety, he cuts the most
gallant figure: neat in every feather, alert, courageous.
Though less excellent in gymnastic feats than the blue
tit, he has one trick few birds can rival — the way he
perches on a bar, and, with bill and claw, pulls up,
inch by inch, the string from which the nut dangles.

As a vast flock of rooks and jackdaws floats in the
afternoon air, wheeling in playful evolu-
The Young tion, the garrulous and querulous jackdaw
Rook's notes are in sharp contrast to the deeper
Fancy bass of the others ; the height at which they
fly mellows the united cawing, but it may
strike a heedful listener that it has an amorous quality.
Close observation reveals that many in the flock fly
strictly in pairs. These afternoon manoeuvres seem part
of the rooks' courting rites. Choosing a mate should be
a serious business for a young rook, since he will be
taking a partner for life — if a virtuous rook. Every day

22

THE SPRING FEVER

now the nest-trees hold a stronger attraction for all in
the colony.

THE rookery is an uproarious place to-day, and the
wood rings with wild cawing as the birds
At the swoop madly about the tree-tops, in a
Rookery veritable spring fever, nest-building being
the new order of the day. With frantic
eagerness the rooks prune the old elms, their strong
bills ruthlessly tearing twigs from the living tree. Bird
after bird drops down upon the old nests to weave the
fresh twigs in place. The work goes on through weeks,
though experienced builders will have the walls of their
nest put up in a couple of days. The business-like way
some birds set about putting an old nest to rights and
lining it with grass suggests they are old hands. And
it may be observed that the experienced builders are
not robbed like the neophytes, whose 'prentice nests
are so often raided and destroyed by the fathers of the
colony.

NESTING days have come again for Jack Hern, a
strange bird, with his long neck and legs,
At the to make a home in trees. There is always
Heronry something incongruous in the sight of
herons standing on tree-tops above their
nests, like guardian angels, or statues of cranes in
Japanese gardens. A setting sun flushes their grey
forms, and their beaks shine like gold daggers. The
heron's love of trees is shown by the way he will perch
on one, for a spell of silent meditation, before beginning
his evening's fishing. The young haunt the nest-trees
the summer through, incessantly clamouring to be fed,

23

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

though they can feed themselves if they choose, as has
been observed on Romney Marsh dykes in May, when
young ones, with undeveloped quills, are found spearing
eels. Farmers then esteem them good eating, and say
that their brown flesh is like a hare's.

HERONS, pressed for food, are so voracious that if one
sails away with something wriggling in its
The Heron bill several others may give chase, rending
Amuses the air with frenzied cries of jealousy. But
Itself at times the heron seems to fish for sport,

and amuses itself by playing pitch-and-toss
with frog or water vole, possibly having fared royally.
So, when eel-fishing, a large eel will be tossed and
twisted about for some moments before being bolted
head-first, and it may be released at the last moment,
as if to be given a chance of affording future sport. Even
the melancholy herons may have a sense of humour.

THE moorhen family that may have lived harmoniously
on one small pond through the Winter now
Greenlegs breaks up; the old male claims the pond,
and with strident challenge turns on his
offspring. They can fly better than one would suppose
from the clumsy way they leave the water to escape his
wrath, steadying themselves by carrying their long
legs stretched out like a rudder. They are born fighters,
and lively duels take place between two young males
over some olive-brown enchanter, who has flirted at
them approvingly with her white tail-patch, and taken
their fancy by the gay red garters of her green legs.

OJST THE MARSHES

ON THE MARSHES

THE burden of the chaffinch's song has been neatly
rendered in words by the phrase, " In
In another month will come the wheat-earl "

Another and his message rings true to-day. For the
Month wheatear must be on his way, being one of
the earliest migrants. His coming will be
first noticed perhaps by the South Down shepherds,
whom these handsome little birds keep company
through the summer, great lovers as they are of hills
by the sea. They are well known, too, about the pebbly
beaches of Romney Marsh, where they will nest on the
beach, or in any old can or kettle they can find for
cover; it has been observed that nests among pebbles
have no lining of feathers which might give away the
secret. Like the swallows, the wheatears return year by
year to the same nesting-sites, their true homes.

THE Romney Marshes have been very fittingly called
" The Land of Larks," and the larks now
Land of are singing their nuptial hymns with ever-
Larks freshening fervour over that green and

watery country. (But lovers of Sussex
Downs cling to a faith that no lowland lark can equal
the rain-like music of the downland birds, singing in
their refined sea and mountain air.) The marshes
respond early to the call of Spring, though vast flocks
of gulls and rooks still make typical winter studies in
black and white on the green ground. The lark in love
cuts a gallant figure, as he hops about his mate, raises
his crest, and flirts an expressive wing.

25

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

SOME of the older writers declare that the skylark sings
by the book — in spite of what the poet says
The Lark's of his unpremeditated art. Opening with a
Song prelude, vivace crescendo, this carries the

soarer to his airy watch-tower. Impatience
during the ascent is the ruling idea. Then the song
becomes moderate, broken into short phrases, each
repeated several times, making a fantasia. While
hovering, head to wind, the ardour gives way to a self-
satisfied calm. And as the singer comes down, so, by
gradations, his melody sinks. Some say they have made
out that the number of the notes accords exactly with
the beating of the wings.

THE LANE TO SPRING

SNOWDROPS, always so well loved in old English gar-
dens, have been pushing up their pendent
February's blooms these three weeks past in Devon
Fair gardens, to be ready to greet Candlemas.

Maids The flower that must often arise through
snow gains much by cultivating the head-
hanging habit ; it sheds moisture easily, and can set its
seeds regardless of February's efforts to fill dykes. The
old English snowdrop, never more attractive than when
naturalized in grass (except, perhaps, when growing
wild in the woods) holds its own against new
varieties, the so-called yellow snowdrops, with their
rich yellow ovaries and yellow markings of the
inner petals, or the green sorts, with green on the
outer petals.

26

THE LANE TO SPRING

THE interregnum between snowdrop and white violet
is filled by the humble green dog's-mercury,
Green a plant humbler even than the green mos-

Flowers chatel, named adoxa — " without glory."
Botanists dub such green flowers, and such
as the spurges, as degenerates; thus adoxa, they say,
once sported a gay white or pink corolla. But a green
flower may be wise in its generation. Adoxa, having no
bright colours, avoids attention from undesirable in-
sects seeking its honey, as it cheats the birds by bending
its fruit-stalk to hide its seeds below its leaves. And
dog's-mercury, at least, has claimed our special human
admiration for the very greenness of the carpet it now
spreads in the woods, speeding thoughts to cuckoo-
time.

THAT we have passed far along the lane to Spring is
shown by any country cottage garden, with
Gilliflowers a goodly display of snowdrop and crocus,
of primroses, plain and coloured, and wall-
flowers precociously in bloom — still happily known by
their pleasing name of gilliflowers. Though cottagers'
favourites, wallflowers never seem more happy than
when living up to their name by growing on the walls
of crumbling abbeys and castles, from which habit they
are the emblem, in the language of flowers, of " Friend-
ship in adversity." Florists have given varieties grand
names, like Belvoir Castle, but an old Devon name' for
a deep-hued sort, often planted on the ledges of cottage
windows, is more forceful — Bloody Warrior, signifying
that it stands sentinel to guard the home. The botanist's
name, " cheiranthus," handflower, alludes to the gilli-
flowers' service as nosegays.
27

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

A FLOWER of the day, humble, leafless, but of joyful
countenance, is colt's-foot, a flower well
A Witty known to the train traveller from the lavish
Flower way it spreads its gold on barren embank-
ments. It is a flower of wise wits. Blooming
betimes, it attracts the earliest insects, when there is no
competition from other flowers. It protects its stem by
warm scales. In rain, it has the wit to droop its head,
and shed the water. Ripening early, its twenty thousand
seeds have a good start in life. The cautious leaves appear
later, seemingly wrapped in cotton-wool, and grow to
the shape of a colt's foot, until ten inches across. They
have been used for centuries for the making of a
fragrant tobacco.

FEBRUARY has several other flowers, like almond and
blackthorn, which bloom before the leaves
Precocious dare appear. Winter heliotrope, the Con-
Flowers tinental species of butterbur, which we have
naturalized in many lanes, is another flower
of the day ; and butterbur itself is among the precocious
ones, its flesh-coloured flower-heads being an attraction
to the first bees out of the hive. The generic name,
" petasites," refers to the children's delight in the vast
leaves, yet unborn, that will grow to be three feet across,
making excellent sunshades.

28

MARCH

MARCH

IS drawn in Tawny, with a fierce aspect, a Helmet
upon his head, and leaning on a Spade, and a
Basket of Garden Seeds in his Left hand, and in his
Right hand the Sign of Aries : and Winged.

MARCH MARRIAGES

EACH day brings its own new token of Spring, some
fresh flower-face, or the sight of new
Dazes in courtiers among birds, like that of a pair
Love of jackdaws soaring high into the air, quite

in the way of an eagle. Some daws of a
manorial park are happily employed to-day in pro-
specting for nest-sites, though they well know all the
suitable places. They most favour old walnut-trees
with holes, and two walnuts will give nesting sanctuary
to a dozen pairs. Nesting later than rooks, they enjoy
long courtships, favouring May for egg-laying.

No birds have proved more susceptible to the blandish-
ments of a precocious Spring than the wood-pigeons.

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Crooning They respond to the mild weather with the
to the same whole heart as the primroses now

Moon sheeting Sussex copses. Not only have the

pigeons been crooning their husky refrain
about " Tak' two coos, Davey," since Christmas, but
nests with eggs have been recorded in many parts
through the past two months. Some naturalists believe
that, as with common pigeons, it is the male wood-
pigeon that sits by day on the two eggs, while his mate
takes the night watch. The song is sometimes heard by
moonlight: the writer, by passing a roadside nest,
recently set a wood-pigeon crooning at one o'clock in
the morning.

AN amusing half-hour may always be spent at the
rookery to-day, if only in watching the
The birds in their nests, as Washington Irving

Rookery says, " quarrelling for a corner of the
Police blanket." One may pick out practised

housekeepers; amateurs, who bungle their
building, and have their work pulled to pieces by their
seniors; honest builders, who fetch their own rafters;
bachelors, rapscallions and thieves. But the rooks have
an efficient police force, and now and then some in-
corrigible rogue is proclaimed an outlaw, and is driven
from the colony, neck and crop. Then his one hope of
salvation is that the police will forget about him, in the
stress of their own affairs .

ROOKS are conservatives, with aristocratic tendencies,

if we may judge from their habit of nesting

Bachelor in the trees of lordly domains. When a new

Rooks rookery is founded, the experiment is

32

MARCH MARRIAGES

always started very cautiously. A crowd of rooks will
spend hours of a day watching the building of the first
two or three nests, and it may not be until after the
pioneers have eggs and even young that the remainder
of the colony make up their minds to start building in
the new home. These late nesters may be those who are
bachelors to-day, and are waiting until surplus spinsters
are to be found, sitting out in another rookery.

JACK HERN is now deeply in family affairs; his rule is
to make a right early start, being influenced
The perhaps by the extreme slowness of young

Heronry herons in growing up; the story of the
nesting affairs is a very long one. Early in
February the great nests, that may measure four feet
across, are put into repair. Early this month (some-
times even in January) the eggs are laid. They hatch
in about four weeks, and it is not until the end of May
that the young birds, remarkably helpless creatures,
first flap from the nest to the boughs, and even in
August they are still seen about the nest-trees, clamour-
ing to their parents for food by day and by night.

THE aristocrat of the tribe of titmice is that atom of a
grey-and-white, rosy-breasted bird called
Bottle-Tom long-tailed, whose nesting days come with
Blackthorn Winter. Its miracle of a bottle-
shaped, lichen-covered nest of two thousand feathers is
often set in a flowering thorn. Though like the other
tits in its dainty poses, the long tail is a badge of dis-
tinction, and it disdains tree-holes as nest-sites. Very
sociable, it never seems to be so happy as when one

33 D

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

of a band leading a rout of other birds through the
leafless woods, a motley crew of blue, great, marsh and
cole tits, with nuthatches, tree-creepers, and golden-
crested wrens, enjoying a hunt with a zest like that of
hounds in cry. So sociable is Bottle-Tom that two
pairs have been known to share one nest.

THROUGH all the roarings of young March the
chaffinch, now in brilliant nuptial vestment,
His has been singing his jolly song, a song of

Merry Spring as truly as the yellow hammer's,
Note and distinctive in the rising chorus for

its rollicking character. Short and ringing,
always the same, there is not a trace of pathos in the
quick, jumbled notes. Jollity, not sentiment, seems the
motive, in spite of one neat translation of the song,
" Sweet, sweet — Bring -my- pretty- love -to -meet- me -
here." And it may well be that the cock chaffinch takes
love lightly as is suggested by his name, " ccelebs."

A STARLING on a chimney-pot on a bright March
morning makes some of the j oiliest music
The of the season, and cuts a gallant figure, as

Sociable the sun glitters on his iridescent greenery.
Starling Matins finished, he amuses himself by
stuffing straw into a hole under the eave.
Nesting-time makes a big break in one of his strongest
instincts — his love of a crowd. But he must find a hole
for his nest: and the wonder is that there are holes
enough for the starling hosts. An inveterate hole-
stealer, he will even drive the diligent green wood-
peckers from tree-holes they have newly excavated.

34

WOULD A-WOOING GO

But the gregarious instinct is quick to assert itself, and
young starlings gather in merry bands directly they can
use their wings.

AFTER peacocks, there can scarcely be a more glorious
bird- ornament to any lawn than the
Garden pheasant in his courting array; and just
Pheasants now, where pheasants have been induced
to haunt gardens, they give every day the
liveliest displays of their powers as duellists. A fight
between two well-matched warriors is a spectacular
affair ; wings are spread, and tails are elevated in peacock
fashion, as the adversaries face each other, with heads
held low, fencing for an opening for beaks and spurs,
while uttering their shrill challenges. The fight that
follows would have delighted the heart of such a
connoisseur of cock-fighting as Henry VIII, had it
taken place in his Royal Cock-pit at Whitehall, and
yet sometimes, at the end of a long duel, not a feather
will have flown.

WOULD A-WOOING GO

THE time of the batrachians is come, and once more
the garden frog makes sport for the garden
The terrier. That his first thought, on waking

Frogs from winter sleep in the mud, is to go a-

wooing, his croaking testifies. In one
respect the mated frogs often lack sense, when laying
their one or two thousand eggs in a puddle which must
quickly dry. The frog's croaking, now a pleasant, rural
sound, is no doubt as much a love-charm as the
nightingale's song, and he has other points with which

35

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

he may hope to soften the heart of his awe-inspiring,
Amazonian mate, so much bigger than himself — the
glory of his golden eyes, and his marvellous skin.

A TAME toad of a garden; a buxom and matronly toad,
lives beside a lily-pond, where she receives
Tale of a many visitors, eating some, and sending
Toad others packing with a dose of her venom.

One day she was called upon by a party
of baby moorhens, attracted by the water. They came
to a stop as they beheld, in evident curiosity, a large
worm wriggling in and out of her cavernous mouth.
All save one of the chicks decided to retire. The one
brave heart advanced boldly, and began pecking at the
worm. A lively tug-of-war ensued. But it was the toad
that ate the worm, and the small bird, as if fearing a
like fate, then beat a scared retreat from the toad's
rolling eyes and flashing tongue.

THE crested newt, biggest of efts, is one of the quaintest
characters which start life as the pond's
Water water-babies. Now, like the wanton lap-
Babies wing, he gets himself a new crest for the
charming of a mate, whose love he cements
by whipping her with his tail. The two, agreeing, seek
a pond for egg-laying, going ashore when family
matters are settled. They have a reputation for stinging,
hence, in the fairy play, were abjured, with the equally
harmless slow- worm, to do no harm to the fairy queen.
Spenser sang of marshes " In which the fearfull Ewftes
do build their bowres," a passage of interest as showing
how the old name has changed from " an ewfte " to
" an ewt," and to " a newt."

36

WOULD A-WOOING GO

THE courting rites of the peewits while still in flocks,
and their incessant search in these days
The for what they consider ideal nesting-sites

Wailing on the marsh, make a delightful March
Whaups study. Sportsmen often argue, selfishly
but well, that no birds are more useful to
man. They are exemplary in their work for the farmer,
never thieving, but ever destroying pests. The virtue
in plovers' eggs is emphasized, and the pretty sport the
birds give to the wildfowler. More to the point is the
fascination of their flight these March days, as the
flocks wheel and dip, and the Spring is in their cries,
however plaintive and wistful.

THE musical, but to some ears, somewhat eerie call of
the golden plover is now heard again on
Whistling the northern moors where it nests. One
Plover Spring call is rendered by the syllables
" Tirr-pee-you ! " uttered on the wing;
besides the plaintive whistle there is a peculiar rippling
note in courting days, comparable to the drumming of
snipe. Only on its native heath is the concealing quality
of its gold-speckled plumage fully revealed. On the
nest it is well-nigh invisible, since, like the grouse, it
tones in magically with heather, and this in spite of
its black and old gold of the upper parts.

THE return last week of a great crested grebe, complete
with chestnut frill, to a pond where it
Lovelorn built a floating nest last summer, made the
Loons day red-lettered for some of the bird's

human friends. A fine figure it cuts, swim-
ming with head held on high, and in a nervous way

37

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

which suggests it is for ever on the point of taking a
header. Courting rites make a quaint spectacle, since
each sex is demonstrative, and the two lovers will rear
themselves high out of the water to display their
gleaming white breasts. In Norfolk the birds are now
expected to return to their old haunts on the Broads —
of which it is well said they are the greatest ornament.

THE TRUANTS

THE wheatear is often first among our truant birds to
come home from winter quarters. Now it
The First is a matter of days before it may be ex-
Migrant pected on sheep-walks by the sea. A
northern name is steindepill, or stone-
dapple, signifying a dapple-mark on a stone, for which
the bird might pass on a stone-flecked down. Our
name signifies white-rump, from the martin-like patch
on the back. In John Ray's " English Proverbs," the
wheatear, or English ortolan, is described as " one of
the good things of Sussex." The description is true,
though one may disapprove of the inference that it is
especially good when roasted in vine-leaves.

Now that the stone curlew, with its wailing cry, is back
from Winter quarters — their whereabouts
A Spring its secret — Spring cannot be far behind. It
Note is remarkable that though endowed with

three common names, not one rings true.
Stone curlew is apt only because it haunts stony up-
lands and because it cries " Cur-lwee ! " Norfolk plover
is right in that Norfolk is among its summer head-
quarters, and wrong in that it is no true plover. And

38

THE TRUANTS

the name thick-knee should read thick-ankle. It is a
bustard-like bird, with the bustard's tricks of crouching
and running, and the large round eyes proclaim a bird
of twilight.

THE chiffchaff is due, to cry his own name to the
woods, at the end of this week, and he is
Chiffchaff usually punctual. He is the first of the
Summer song-birds to appear in gardens,
and is the smallest of the garden choir they make up.
Naturalists hail him as the truest Spring herald. A
modest and midget bird, in quiet olive-green, with
black legs, his two notes, " chiff " and " chaff," rarely
varied by a " chiwy-chawy," are as eagerly listened
for as the call of cuckoo himself. He comes with the
sweet violets, and all sweet things of what our fathers
called the Primaveral Reign — the season between
snowdrop and cowslip.

ONE of the most fascinating birds of early Spring is the
wryneck. Rarely seen in its beautifully
The pencilled greys and browns (a living picture

Cuckoo's of tree-bark), its high, kestrel-like note
Leader compels attention, and has a message when
first heard, since the wryneck is the ac-
credited " cuckoo's leader." The ancients were im-
pressed by the flashing of the bird's long tongue, which
never flashes out for ants' eggs in vain, and concluded
that it had uncanny powers of fascinating its prey. In
sorcery it became a love-charm, hence it has figured in
literature (in " Hereward the Wake"). A lovelorn maid
would sacrifice a trapped wryneck to the tune of the
invocation, " Wryneck, bring my man to the house."

39

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

AT HEAVEN'S GATE

THE March day that gives the music of larks falling on
leagues of blossoming gorse recalls a fancy
Larks and of the poet (Swinburne) — how the sun fills
Gorse the gorse's gold " with odour like the

colour." The botanist would have us note
that the plant is not what it seems, but is a relation of
clover, as is clear from its infantile trefoil leaves; even
its fragrance of honey is deceptive, as it is without
nectar; the bee that unlocks the petals being rewarded
by an explosion of pollen-dust. The poet, caring for
none of these things, would make us see how the lark's
song and the gorse-bloom accord on a March day.

IT is always with special pleasure that we hear the song
of the woodlark ; this minstrel is not com-
The mon, and his song, to many ears, is sweeter,

Skylark's purer, and less guttural than the pibroch
Cousin of the skylark. He is known by his spiral
song-flight; if seen at close quarters, by the
strongly-marked eye-stripes and the short tail. Smaller
than the skylark, he is richer in hue. And he is more at
home in trees than the skylark (who knows only earth
and air), often flying to trees if alarmed, singing in
trees, and thence launching himself heavenwards. If it
is possible for any voice to be more joyous than the
skylark's, it is surely his cousin's.

HOVERING may well be the supreme art of bird flight,

with our wind-hoverer and lark among its

Art of supreme masters. The kingfisher makes a

Hovering shining picture as he hangs above the

40

IN WOOD AND MEAD

stream. The goldcrest is also an expert hoverer, and
its midget form is often seen, quivering below a branch.
Titmouse, sparrow, starling, and robin hover occasion-
ally, and several warblers, whitethroat, wood-wren, and
willow- wren, have a hovering mode of flight. In Summer
the nightjar poises, his long wings almost touching
above his back: in Spring the courting wood-pigeon
poises in mid-flight, looking like a picture of a dove in
an old picture-Bible.

IN WOOD AND MEAD

HISTORY is repeating itself in the woods, where now
there are tiny leaves on the elm tree's
Pheasant brushwood, and silver birch and hawthorn
Duellists are fast breaking into greenery, and the
cock pheasant is selecting his seraglio.
Veterans are causing trouble among the youngsters,
driving them far afield, whereas the keeper likes to see
a promising young cock in undisputed possession of
eight or ten hens, lord of a happy harem, content with
one chosen haunt, where the nests will be near together.
The warrior pheasant makes a glorious picture as he
swaggers along in his full war-paint, crimson cheeks
aglow, crowing his challenge to all comers.

SNOW in the woods holds for the gamekeeper a record

of every poacher in fur that haunts his

The coverts. At night, no fox, stoat, weasel,

Trapping badger, hedgehog, rat or minutest mouse

Month may stir without charting his every step in

the snow. The hare leaves a trail so marked

that a blind man might follow. The overlapping of

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trails, a troubling of snow, and a few scarlet stains, tell
of a poacher's kill. The information gained is vouch-
safed at a timely hour for the keeper, who now opens
his March trapping campaign. Through this month all
his energies are bent on, keeping down rabbits and
vermin.

INTO a pasture where a bunch of lambs were cutting
capers leapt, from a small spinney, a fox,
Reynard's as if to join in the play. He out-capered the
Little liveliest of the lambs, and pounced and

Game rolled with the playfulness of a puppy. The

lambs seemed to welcome a new playmate ;
watched his antics awhile ; then made a skipping charge,
which drove him back to the spinney. A moment later
he reappeared, and the lambs romped to greet him, but,
after running a circle, he quickly retired, leaving the
lambs all alert to carry on the game of " I spy." The
fox may have spied the approaching shepherd. His
play seemed innocent : but who would trust him but a
lamb?

THIS week we may find in woods an anemone more
precious and lovely than the many-hued
Wind sorts that for so long have been flaunting

Flowers in flower-shops. The discovery of the first
wood anemones makes a red-lettered day
as memorable as the day when the first chiffchaff comes
and calls its name in March. The dead whiteness of the
anemone is set off by the tinge of pink on the petals
(or sepals), and now and then a drift of anemones is
found with the flowers purple, or even a delicate sky-
blue, within and without. They are well-named wind-

IN WOOD AND MEAD

flowers, and though they turn their faces away from the
wind they dance to the slightest breeze.

WHILE the woods show the faintest signs of burgeoning,
new greenery spreads daily over the stone
Mother -of- hedges of the west country, where the
Thousands pennywort makes a living cement to every
rock. On bridges and grey-walled ruins the
dainty little ivy-leafed toadflax is making good head-
way, a plant of remarkable sense and sensibility,
deservedly called Mother-of -Thousands . The tiny lilac
flowers are sun- worshippers, but directly the fruit is
formed each flower-stalk turns from the sun to the
wall and, bending, deposits the seeds in any cracks
discovered. In rustic parlours, this charming wilding
is sometimes, grown with its slender branches depending
in a flower-pot suspended from a convenient beam — an
old-fashioned cottage ornament.

43

APRIL

AY O U N G Man in Green, with a Garland of
Mirtle, and Hawthorn-buds ; Winged ; in one hand
Primroses and Violets, in the other the Sign Taurus.

PROUD PIED APRIL

YOUNG April takes up with a will his task of greening
the world — " making it all one emerald."
Advertising The hawthorns turn green while we wait.
April For the promise of a screen at last for his

eggs, the blackbird gives due praise. He
praises every spring thing — himself included, one
suspects, for there seems something peculiarly self-
expressive in his lazy notes. The bird's behaviour often
suggests that he is a pessimist as black as his coat — the
way he skulks in shadowy places, like the embodied
spirit of a Blackfoot Indian. But his voice proves that
his heart is as golden as his bill.

WHAT the poet meant by naming the month " Proud,

pied April," is very clear in the beech- woods,

Pied where the trees are now breaking, in their

April hesitating way, into verdure, with here a

small spray of greenery on a tree, there

45

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

one whole branch in leaf, but one only, and with small
trees, growing in the shade of their fathers, fully clad
in April's livery. The pied effect of the verdure against
the prevailing purple-brown tones suggests green veils
hanging out to dry. Perhaps nowhere in England may
such carpets of violets be found as cover the floor of
Buckinghamshire beech-woods to-day. But the glory of
the moment is the cherry-blossom, the cherries tower-
ing up like pyramids of snow.

THE dainty wood-sorrel is sometimes known as Alle-
luia, also as cuckoo's or gowk's meat, as it
The blossoms when the cuckoo comes. It is

Cuckoo's remarkable among flowers in that both its
Flower blossoms and leaves obviously fall asleep,
against rain and nightfall ; the flowers fold-
ing their petals and hanging their heads, the three
leaflets of a leaf folding downwards, as if to keep warm
by cuddling. The property of sleep is believed to reside
in minute pink swellings at the base of each leaflet.
Neither the flowers of the violet nor the wood-sorrel,
as we know them, produce seeds, but are succeeded by
seed-bearing flowers, which do not open; so far an
unexplained mystery of botany.

IN several counties the fortunes of the magpies are in

the ascendant: on the Sussex downs their

Magpie numbers multiply, and in many of the

Fortunes Buckinghamshire beech-woods one is rarely

out of hearing of Mag's guttural chatter. The

great nests are to-day a very conspicuous feature of the

beech- woods of the Chilterns. Mag's eggs — much like a

jackdaw's — show her affinity with jackdaws, rooks, and

46

PROUD PIED APRIL

crows, and her nest, with its dome and its thorny pali-
sade, is considered a comparatively new and an advanced
type of crow architecture — becoming to the craftiest
and most mischievous of her tribe.

BEECH-TREES are unkind to other plants, and because of
their sunproof leaves the beech-wood
Beech-wood floor is commonly brown and bare in
Flowers summer, save for a few wild orchids. But
before the leaves unfold, the early wild
flowers have a chance to blow for a brief season, and
to-day the floors of Buckinghamshire woods are covered
by a rich tapestry of violets, anemones, and the ethereal
blooms of wood-sorrel. And in Sussex beech- woods,
in the St. Leonards Forest district, the wild daffodils
will be succeeded in a few days by azure seas of blue-
bells : already the children have carried home in triumph
small bunches of the earliest bells.

ONE of the prettiest floral pictures of the April hedge-
row is made by stitchwort, whose grass-like
Starwort leaves are veritable grappling-hooks to drag
the brittle stems through the herbage until
the flowers can shine out like stars. The plant was
anciently called " All-bone," a name which puzzled
Gerard, as he could see no reason for it, unless " it
were so called of contraries." Our name may refer to
an old faith that a decoction of the plant cured stitches
in the side; but it is also traced to the Greek word for
sting, as the plant was among the many cures for a
serpent's bite. But starwort is the name that best be-
comes the gleaming flowers.

47

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

THE cuckoo-pints now make a brave show of greenery
in every hedge, to greet the belated cuckoos.
The With their great green spathes, shaped like

Cuckoo's hare's ears, they have ever caught the fancy
Plant of herbalists. The name, lords-and-ladies,

is traced to a notion that the floral club is
like a person of quality, sitting with dignity in a sedan-
chair. Gerard, in his Herbal, associated the plant with
bears, describing how they relished it after fasting for
forty days in winter. Certainly pheasants and others
appreciate the roots, though it is not clear why the
cuckoo should rejoice in the spadix.

THE SUMMER BIRDS

THIS week we are likely to be deceived again in thinking
we see our first cuckoo when it is a sparrow-
Cuckoo or hawk that flashes across our path. Nature
Hawk? seems deliberately to have fashioned the
two birds in the same mould. It is suggested
that it was done to frighten the titlark, whose nest the
cuckoo would violate, even though titlarks summon
courage to mob cuckoos. And it seems likely that they
mistake the weak, harmless insect-eating cuckoo for a
ravenous hawk. We can hardly suppose they recognize
the cuckoo as a parasite, or share the prejudice in which
many people hold the bird.

IN April, says the Norfolk proverb, the cuckoo shows
his bill ; in May he sing, night and day ; in
The July? away he fly. Now, in Blackthorn

Cuckoo's Winter, his two old notes are full of good
Magnetism cheer ; though it is true they inspire mingled

48

THE SUMMER BIRDS

feelings, such as are expressed by a forgotten sonnet,
which opens by apostrophizing him as " Thou mono-
tonous bird! " and closes by wishing he would call for
ever. For all his sins, and his sleep- destroying calls to
the rising sun, he has some magnetic power to compel
our liking. And a hundred stories prove how he makes
slaves of other birds ; so that if a helpless young cuckoo
is kept in a cage with a young thrush, scarcely fledged,
the thrush will feed its fellow-prisoner with utmost
solicitude.

CHIFFCHAFFS, all through an April Eastertide, delight
holiday-makers by their cheering song of
First Leaf- two notes. These little leaf- warblers are
Warblers now established favourites, and it is re-
markable to recall that, like willow-wrens
and wood- wrens, they were hardly known in the
eighteenth century, and had no English names; it
might almost be said that they were discovered by
White of Selborne. The willow-wren (though he con-
fused it with the garden-warbler) he knew by its
" joyous, easy laughing note," a happy description of
its silvery chime ; the chiffchaff he called " the chirper,"
making the surprising statement, " It utters two sharp
piercing notes, so loud in hollow woods as to occasion
an echo."

THEY came over the cliffs of Newhaven in the grey of
dawn, resolving themselves from a small,

The First smudgy cloud on the horizon into pur-

Swallows poseful units, their identity clear from the
forked tails. Soaring over the cliffs at fifty

miles an hour, the party began to break up before it was

49 E

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

out of sight. The arrival home of a pair of barn-nesters
was duly noted — how they flew on an arrow-straight
course, without abating a jot of speed, cleanly through
a small hole in a board under the barn's eave, to the
old, crumbled stucco nest on a beam, and by a joyous
twittering announced themselves as the first swallows
to return to the farm. With their advent, Spring seemed
to come at last.

A STANDING mystery of April is the way the swallows
come and vanish. Cuckoos and swallows
The may have been seen in places for a fort-

Swallows' night, while many woods are still waiting to
Vanishing have their echoes stirred by the cuckoo's
Trick call, and many villages have caught but

glimpses of vanguard swallows: the main
body still delaying. Every year it is anxiously awaited
by naturalists concerned by the grevious thinning of
swallow ranks through many past summers. The
vanishing trick is thus explained: swallows whose
nesting-place is distant from water retire for a while,
after reaching home in Spring, and again before
setting sail in Autumn, to congregate at the nearest
river, moat or pond. Mid-May is time enough for their
egg-laying.

HOUSE-MARTINS returned a few days ago to some of their
village homes, and were seen spending a
The joyous hour or two — judging by their ani-

Martlets' mated twittering — inspecting their stucco
Return castles under the eaves. The inspection over,
they retired, as if to discuss future building
plans and rest awhile before seriously taking up house-
So

FAMILIAR BIRDS

keeping. They seem to bring with them a train of sum-
mery ideas. Their fleet forms and flashing white rumps
bring life and movement to the sleepy village street, as
they bring welcome music, with their melodious warb-
ling and the crooning songs they sing in the nests.

THE " screechers " are due to arrive within a week,
the sooty, scythe-shaped swifts, well-
The named, being the swiftest of our birds,

Screeching pursuing their headlong course sixteen
Brother- hours a day, whether round the old church
hood tower or a thousand feet high. The swift is

the swallow's cousin in the eyes of country
people. But he is no relation. The swallow sings, for
one distinction, and sings as melodiously as a garden-
warbler, whereas the swift only screeches. The swallow,
again, perches safely on a telegraph-wire, while swifts
cannot perch, and even collect nesting-material on the
wing.

FAMILIAR BIRDS

ROBINS have all been migrating through the past few
days. The familiar garden robin, who has
The haunted the lawn by a house-window

Robin's through the winter, paying for his crumbs
Nest by song, has flown to the orchard, and

there is making his nest in the ditch-bank,
among the white violets. By one infallible sign an
expert on birds' nests always knows how to find any
robin's nest in a bank — the sign of dead leaves at the
entrance, spread like a doormat. The leaves are actually
laid in place before the nest itself is woven in a

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

saucer-shaped depression, cunningly fashioned in the
bank. The doormat may serve some obscure object of
camouflage.

ROBINS are credited with a passion for nesting in old
kettles, yet it is a triumph to find a kettle-
When nest, even when there is a good crop of

Robins kettles in a wood near cottages. Though so
Nest friendly to man, Robin is always as willing

to nest in a solitary haunt as in a garden
outhouse. His favourite site is a bank, but sometimes he
nests on the floor of a wood, risking the perils of vermin.
It is engaging to find nests within reach of craftsmen at
work. Sir William Jardine, writing about 1839, re-
marked on the intense devotion of the birds to the old-
fashioned saw-pit, which in Spring would always
harbour nesting redbreasts, sitting within a yard of
toiling sawyers.

IN the attribute of friendliness to man, the marsh-tit
comes next to the robin: no wild bird is
A more easily won by kindness. In its

Fearless Quakerish garb, with a black cap for sole
Titmouse ornament, it looks like a poor relation of
the swaggering great tit, in his primrose
vest slashed with purple. But in its friendliness the
marsh-tit is the most charming of the family. The
moment it discovers an hospitable board spread in a
garden, it makes itself at home. And it is easily lured
into houses, will hop without the least fear about
tables, and will perch on heads and shoulders, even on
the pen of a quiet writer.

BRIDAL DAYS

BRIDAL DAYS

THE nesting-time of the owls has set in, but nest-
building is an absent instinct — they scorn
Owls' feather-beds. The little owl is content with

Nests a ledge in a tree's hollow; the brown owl

will lay almost anywhere, in tree-holes, on
the ground, in cliffs, or, like a sheldrake, in a rabbit's
burrow. The long-eared owl has good cause to lay its
eggs betimes, since it occupies another's nest. It must
be a shock to a pair of sparrow-hawks, when they
return to their last year's nest, a month after owls have
taken possession, to find installed a family of angry-
eyed, hissing owlets, uncannily like cats, with their
ear-tufts and mewing voices.

LINTIE, the linnet, now assumes nuptial plumage, and
is remarkable as an instance of a bird
Linnets making a display of wedding finery in
Spring without moulting. In Autumn,
feathers grow on the cock's head and breast, having
broad, greyish edges, which conceal through the
Winter their crimson hues. The edges wear off, dis-
playing the spruce carmine waistcoat, and now, with
his sweet voice and gay bridegroom aspect, he cannot
fail to charm a mate. It is unfortunate for linnets that
no caged wild birds of our land are more companion-
able, or have happier, livelier songs. They are credited
with fine ears for music, fanciers claiming that a caged
bird with a perfect voice will refuse to sing in compe-
tition with a poor performer.

THE grey wagtail, slender and graceful in form, radiant
as sunshine in hue — the sprite of the moorland stream

53

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Ariel of — is almost our loveliest small bird, in the
the first flight with goldfinch, bullfinch, and the

Streams harlequin stonechat. Through the Winter
the wagtail has been a chaste study, the upper
parts bluish-grey, the rump yellowish-olive, the throat
shading from white into oranges and yellows. Now the
male puts on his full nuptial plumage, and wears as love-
token a resplendent ebony gorget. There will soon be a
nest in tangled herbage under a ledge of the bank, for
it is his ambition to rear two broods, which shall enliven
our rocky streams by their sylph-like forms.

ON park ponds the courting rites of the wildfowl now
make entertaining studies. " Coppernob,"
Pond as the children call the pochard, circles

Courtiers amorously round his darling duck. The
slender pintail drakes display their long
tail-feathers to enchantresses, who seem to take no
notice, only answering their soft " inward " courting
notes with harsh quacks; they are not always faithful
lovers, and will hybridize with the mallard. The little
black-tufted duck, with his jaunty crest and golden
eyes, utters piping notes, and the mallard bows cere-
moniously, and has the courting habit of up-tipping
himself in the water, with down-bent head and up-
thrown stern. Like other true lovers, the wild ducks
run into strange capers.

PARTRIDGE pairs begin to scrape out little hollows for
their nests in meadow hedgebanks, though
Early the wise partridge waits for early May

Partridge before laying, and June comes before the
Nests first hatchings rejoice the gamekeeper.

54

COUNTRY CHARACTERS

Often he can do a good turn to the nesters,as by setting
a trap to catch a hedgehog, or moving a nest under
which a mole has driven a tunnel where a weasel might
run. One point may be observed on finding a par-
tridge's nest, that the birds have chosen a pitch, it seems
deliberately, with a screen of guardian brambles between
the nest and the footpath way.

THE pretty siskins are now deserted by their Winter
companions, goldfinches and lesser red-
The polls, and make an early start in building

Siskins' their snug nests in the fir- woods, nests of
Song-flight moss, wool, horsehair, and feathers, of
interest to the squirrel and the jay, who
have a shrewd eye for the bullfinch-like eggs. The
restless little cock, as bright as a canary, has a hurried
and most pleasing song, into which all kinds of familiar
notes may be introduced. He often utters this delightful
miscellany on the wing, much in the manner of a pipit.
But, unlike the pipit, he will sing his song through two
or three times during one flight, as if he cannot do
enough to cheer his sitting mate.

COUNTRY CHARACTERS

A NEW arrangement of our birds might be made,

according to their dispositions, whether

The solitary, social, wary, bold, joyous — or

Feathered joyless. Does any bird stand for more pro-

Mouse found melancholy than the heron? The

buzzard, sulking on a stone hedge in

Cornwall, is well compared to the hunchbacked King

Richard, sullen on his throne. One bird would need a

55

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

class to itself, the mouse-like tree-creeper, most modest
and retiring of all our birds, yet always at work, hope-
fully climbing trees. But at this happy season of the
year it often breaks its rule of silence by uttering a tiny,
shrill, sibilant note, and a, ghost of a song of three or
four notes : even the tree-creeper feels the spring fever.

THE jay screams if you pass his nest; the blackbird
cackles ; the tomtit hisses like a snake ; but
Songs of the wren challenges by a ringing lyric, as if
Challenge daring you to approach one step nearer to
his secret. The sudden, loud song may well
distract attention from the nest, which perhaps is the
wren's idea. The lark also sings if put up from a nest,
and the sedge-warbler, newly returned to its reedy
haunt of yesteryear, outpours a hurried song whenever
disturbed, by day or night. The whitethroat, too, sings
to scold trespassers.

56

MAY

MAY

WI T H a Sweet and lovely Countenance, clad
in a robe of White and Green, embroidered with
several Flowres, upon his Head a garland of all manner
of Roses ; on the one hand a Nightingale, in the other a
Lute. His Sign must be Gemini.

MAY'S ANODYNE

IT is the week of weeks for the beech- woods. Their
brilliantly vivid and fresh greenery makes
Green a woodland colour scheme which can have

Cathedrals no equal until October turns the leaves
fox-red, but the freshness will pass before
May is out. One must go into the deeps of such great
beechen forests as cover the Chilterns to feel the full
sense of the vivid colour. Usually beech- woods are
credited with brown leaf-carpets, but many of those
of the Chilterns are as green underfoot as above with
the myriads of year-old seedlings: or are of bluebell
ultramarine. The utter silence of some of the green
aisles adds a cathedral-like effect.

59

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

IT is pleasant to know of badgers in a countryside,
though they are rarely seen. They have
Badgers' fastnesses from which it seems they will
Ancestral never be driven. If forced from less im-
Memory pregnable strongholds, they have a way of
reappearing after many years, as if by
virtue of ancestral memory. Gamekeepers note the same
point about woodcock — they vanish, but return after
years to one spot, perhaps not a feeding-ground, un-
distinguished from others over leagues of land. A
generation ago, on the Sussex downs, in the days of
one remembered as " The old Squire," a famous
badger and fox stronghold was utterly effaced by
blasting. Badgers are there to-day, and with families.

A FLOWER of to-day is the Pasque-flower, almost first
in beauty among our wild flowers, queen
The of our anemones ; a rarity of the short down

Pasque- grass of the Chilterns, or other downs and
flower limestone pastures. It blooms later than its

lowly sister, the wood anemone, and its
leaves, and the chalice of imperial hue, are remarkable
for their silkiness. Two other rare sisters are found in
the wilds, the yellow and the blue mountain anemones:
these are aliens. The Pasque-flower is a native, and a
wilding, though it looks as if it had wandered from a
lordly garden-bed, to blush unseen in some wild and
secret place.

ARMIES of daisies that invade golf-courses arouse deadly

anathemas ; but deserve a word of admira-

Warrior tion for their easy victory over the grasses.

Daisies Their leaf-rosettes take firm possession of

60

FLOWERS AND SONG

the earth, and each spoon-shaped leaf is so arranged
in a mosaic as to have its full share of sunshine.
The white, barren florets, an advertisement to insects,
are also a warning banner flown in the sheep's face,
but their main task is the unfolding of the fertile florets
when asleep. It is curious to observe how by the raising
of a cone each floret, as it swells in ripening its fruit, is
given a fair standing-place in the sun. The daisy is a
warrior, admirably equipped for battle.

FLOWERS AND SONG

A SETTING of flowers adds delight to birds' songs, as
when a chaffinch is in his element, on a
The flowery orchard bough ; or Pettichaps, the

Orchard garden warbler, sings tirelessly on from
Bough his perch on a white mountain of cherry-

blossom. The chaffinch has but one short
stave; the willow- wren's song lasts three seconds; the
nightingale sings as he listeth ; but Pettichaps emulates
the feats of the sedge-warbler that sings by the hour.
The meadow of his cherry-tree platform has an em-
broidered verge of cowslip, primrose, violet, anemone,
stitchwort and purple orchis, and the warbler sets the
whole flowery picture to appropriate music.

PETTICHAPS is among the six or seven songsters whose

supremely sweet voices place them in the

The foremost rank. Though he has no special love

Blackcap's for gardens, he often makes one musical

Understudy by his presence, and will nest among the

peas or in a gooseberry bush; the name

may carry a tinge of reproach, suggesting that this

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

charming minstrel is as fond of fruit as a blackbird.
The song is hardly to be distinguished from the song
of the blackcap, that " mock nightingale " ; the garden-
warbler is the blackcap's understudy, though he lacks
the master singer's rich, flute-like voice.

LIKE others in love, the male lark assumes a swaggering
mien ; putting on an unusually alert air and
The gait, with elevated crest he hops in pursuit

Laverock of his mate, abandoning his usual run ; and
now and then he will throw out one wing,
and give her a distinct flick. A great lover, he raises two
broods, and this perhaps partly accounts for his long
song-season, extending over at least ten months. But a
month before the skylark, the woodlark, more happily
called laverock, already has settled down to nesting
duties. From the repeated " lu-lu " of his love-song,
he gained the euphonious scientific name, " Ullula,"
for his dulcet music.

LARKS sometimes cease singing at the apogee of their

song-flight, and hurtle silently to earth,

The Rival and now and then one soars in silence —

Larks this is when in pursuit of a rival making

music aloft. He mounts in a purposeful

way, and his silence suggests he knows he needs all his

breath for the desperate adventure: overhauling the

singer, he closes in battle. In one such a contest we

witnessed, the attack failed signally. The pursuit had

been too hot, perhaps, for a good fight. After a skirmish

the attacker fell to earth like a plummet, without having

uttered one note of music, while the victor, soaring

again, filled earth and sky with his paean.

62

VOICE OF THE TURTLE

THE affairs of a pair of tree-creepers nesting in an
orchard form a curious study in secretive-
Ghosts of ness ; perhaps we have no birds so un-
Birds obtrusive, and they are more abundant by

far than would be supposed by those
attracted mainly by bright feathers or arresting song.
They are truly like ghosts of birds, and their forms
blend magically with the tree-trunks they haunt. In-
cessantly climbing the trunks in quest of insects for the
nine nestlings in an apple-tree's hollow, the cock is too
busy to stop to sing hi^ apology of a song : he must do
a wonderfully useful work in the orchard. Before the
summer is out his mate will doubtless oblige him by
laying another clutch of from six to nine eggs.

BY chance or choice, birds often build among the wild
flowers. A floating nest of a great crested
Nests grebe, set about by yellow water-lilies, was

Among one pleasant picture of the summer. The
Flowers sitting- days of a finch nesting in a flowering
may-bush must be fragrant indeed. The
garden-warbler delights in a bush of wild roses; the
long-tailed tits nest among blackthorn blossom; corn-
crakes among clover. A robin's nest in a wood was set
artistically beside a guardian spike of purple orchis.
One pipit's nest is among cowslips, and a wood- wren's
made the prettiest picture among bluebells.

VOICE OF THE TURTLE

OUR three wild pigeon cousins, the ring-dove, the

stock-dove (which lacks the other's neck-

Pigeons ring), and the rock-dove (whose ancestors

and Doves fathered our tame pigeons — pouters, fan-

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

tails, tumblers, homers and the rest), have now been
joined by the gentle turtle-doves, no near relatives, but
with many habits of the typical pigeons. They are less
destructive birds, preferring weed-seeds to corn. Like
the wood-pigeons, each of a pair of parent birds will do
sitting-duty on the eggs. The turtle-dove excels the
pigeon in slenderness and grace, and its voice is softer
and a more purring coo than the pigeon's.

IN THE COVERTS

A PAIR of sparrow-hawks started making a nest in
March, but so leisurely did they work that
The only a fortnight ago was it ready for the

Hawk's first egg, five others following at two-day
Eyrie intervals — perhaps the handsomest eggs

laid by any of our native birds. A rare and
curious woodland sight is the feeding of the young on
birds brought in chiefly by the dashing little male. The
hen takes delivery of his catch, tears up the spoil,
already plucked, and distributes it to the youngsters:
studies in softest white down, but rapacious-looking,
and with needle-sharp talons.

MY lord the cock pheasant dances fairly close atten-
dance on the half-dozen members of his
The harem in the early days of their nesting.

Pheasant's He has a quiet way of paying them visits,
Wives giving a peculiar sort of crow and fluttering

his wings to announce his royal approach.
As sitting-time draws near the hens begin to add their
breast feathers to the nests. A full clutch being laid,
for a day or two the nest may be deserted before the
64

NIGHT BIRDS

hen settles to the four-and-twenty days of hatching.
When one hen comes off her nest to feed, others
follow, and the proud cock may then be seen feeding
with his unassuming wives.

A RED squirrel was racing at speed along a low branch
in a Chiltern beech-wood when it spied
The Alien danger ahead in the form of a human being,
Squirrel and instantly turned itself into a statue ; for
a long ten minutes it clung motionless to a
beech-stem, and not a hair flickered. Suddenly a small
sound electrified it into life, and it bounded on as if
some fiend were on its trail — as it was, no doubt, in a
red squirrel's view, for a great grey squirrel came in
ferocious pursuit. The aliens are now spreading through
the Chilterns, though game-preservers have set a price
on their heads.

NIGHT BIRDS

THE mistle-thrush seems to blow his trumpet-calls for
all the world to hear; other songs seem
Song of dedicated to one listener's ears — possibly
Songs human ears, as when a tame robin perches

on the spade of a gardener who has been
digging, and whispers a confidential lyric of thanks for
worms. By a forest stream the writer found the begin-
ning of a nest in a thick bush, a homely structure of
oak-leaves. Through the thicket there presently slipped
a slender, brownish bird, and as she went to the nest
with some small roots there was breathed from a brier
nearby a long-drawn note of purest melody, thrice

65 F

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

repeated, and then a nightingale broke into full song,
singing, it seemed certain, to hearten his true-love's
labours, and for her delight alone.

THE nightingale — " chief est of the little nimble
musicians of the air," as old Izaak Walton
The quaintly said — was " Ae'don," the singer,

Singer to the Greeks, since there is but one singer
whenever he utters his flute-like notes, his
" music of the moon." As the male nightingales come
first, it has never been doubted that their songs are
genuine love-songs, and signals to lure mates. Bird-
catchers have a curious legend that if a bachelor be
captured it may live as a captive even for twenty years.
But if taken after it has fallen in love, wooed, and
mated, it will pine to death, which goes to suggest that
genuine passion throbs in the nightingale's heart, as in
his music.

THE bird of mystery is now due, the nightjar, with his

strange, unbird-like rattle-song. All his

An Un- ways are the ways that are dark, and have

canny Fowl fostered the wildest legends, as that he

milks goats. He stands curiously apart

from other birds; even in the way he perches, choosing

to differ by crouching lengthwise along branches. His

structure, too, has points of mystery, such as the exact

purpose of the mouth-bristles, and the serrated middle

claws. He comes forth in the mysterious gloaming,

flying in an uncannily noiseless, ghost-like way, yet as

swiftly as a swallow; but sometimes will clap his wings,

as if with deliberate intention to startle.

* 66

SWALLOW-TIME

SWALLOW-TIME

NATURALISTS note with satisfaction when swifts arrive
in great force, and it seems that they in-
The crease in numbers as certainly as swallows

Abundant diminish. In many an old village every
Swifts glance skywards becomes focussed on the
swifts' sooty forms as the never-resting
voyagers circle above the housetops. The way the
swifts of a village arrive in a compact body suggests that
they have kept together since last summer. It is pleasant
to hear their wild screams in the twilight of May
evenings; but, welcome as they are, they cannot make
up for the loss of the swallows.

THE swifts' habits suggest that they are wholly wrapped
up in their own affairs, and that these are
The of the utmost urgency, owing to their being

Exclusive able to stay with us for little longer than
Swifts twelve weeks. They hold themselves in a
marked way aloof from man and other
animals, including most birds, and there is a certain
admirable fearlessness in their conduct. When accepting
the low eaves of thatched cottages for nest-sites, they
pay no attention to the cottagers or their children, and
scarcely deign to notice the cat which eagerly lies in
wait for their fleet forms as they flash to the nests.

A CLOSE observer of a wheeling swift may note a re-
markable feature of the flight, how the long,
A Secret scythe-shaped wings work independently
of Flight of one another, so that in a photograph
one wing might be shown depressed and

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

the other elevated at the top of its beat. When we can
watch the wing-beats of other birds we always find that
the two wings work as one. The swift's mode of flight
is a series of tremulous beats, followed by a glide on
stilled and outspread wings. The almost unmatched
speed may be due largely to the freedom of wing-play,
which certainly accounts for this bird's marvellous
power of checking and turning when in headlong career.

A PAIR of swallows perched on the ridge of a roof, the
cock singing. It was no swallow-flight of
A Winged song, but a regular serenade, and as he
Figaro kept up his warbling for minutes on end
(like a musical version of the creaking of
a roller), his hen grew restless. As if she had had enough
of his flattery, she fluttered away from his side to the
far end of the roof; but he sang on without pause.
Suddenly she began working her wings with every
show of petulance, and, opening her beak to widest
extent, she charged upon her lord and fairly brushed
him from his perch.

CHATTERBOXES

EVERY hedge has its whitethroat now, and every white-
throat calls out against all passers-by: no
Trespassers birds are more alert to warn off trespassers.
Beware The fledglings add scoldings, snappings
and croakings to the parents' protests, as if
hedges were made for whitethroats : they are trained
from the nest to cry out against mankind. Most em-
phatic is the " tchak " note which suggested half the
rustic name, Nettlejack, the other half being derived
from the warblers' love of a nettlebed.
68

A FEROCIOUS COMMONER

THE lesser whitethroat never attracts the attention
given to the greater, whose antics in the
A Minor hedge as it vehemently sings its scolding
Minstrel song — turning and bowing, and flicking its
tail — endear it to all lovers of a leafy lane.
The amusement it inspires is reflected in its many
rustic names, like the Scots nickname, Blethering, or
Chattering Tom. The lesser minstrel is less abundant,
with no arresting power in its short ripple of song, but
this song has a musical quality, and all the charm of a
song sung very softly, as if for you alone.

THOSE small birds of desert places, the various chats,
so named from their notes suggesting the
The Chats clicking together of pebbles, are birds with
distinctive characters and dress. The wheat-
ear's true element is the bare down by the sea, where it
is recognized from afar by the badge of the white
rump. The whinchat, haunting wastes where whin
grows, might be proud of its distinctive eye-stripe, and
remarkable habit of making a tunnel of grass whereby
to approach the nest. The stonechat, in its handsome
coat of black, white, and rufous hues, is the desert's
harlequin.

A FEROCIOUS COMMONER

" THE Sparkler " is a rustic name for the voracious
tiger-beetle, that flies in May on sandy

The Tiger commons, a brilliant and sparkling being,

Beetle with its blue-green, yellow-spotted wing-

covers, and shining blue underside, which

throws back the sunlight. If on a first flight, it will have

69

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

lived already, mainly as a grub, through three Summers.
All its life-story is one of tigerish ferocity, for as a grub,
when inhabiting the pit wherein it was hatched, its
habit was to lie in wait at the entrance for passing
insects: a ferocious-looking ogre now transformed into
a living jewel.

70

JUNE

JUNE

IN a Mantle of dark Grass green, upon his Head a
garland of Bents, Kings-Cups, and Maiden-hair;
in his Left hand an Angle, with a box of Cantharides,
in his Right the Sign Cancer, and upon his arms a
Basket of seasonable Fruits.

BIRD NOTES

THOSE who sleep out through summer nights — and
fail to sleep — well know how musical they
Music of may be with bird-song. Some of the most
the Moon attractive bird-music is the least known,
the " music of the moon," whether the
sedge-bird's babbling by the moonlit stream in summer,
or the rush of wigeons' wings on a frosty winter's
night, and their beautiful " whee-ou " whistle. Thrush,
robin, and even blackbird will occasionally sing in the
midnight watch. Gilbert White amused himself by
grouping birds according to their songs; one list was
of night singers, but it includes only the nightingale,

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

" in shadiest covert hid," the woodlark and the sedge-
warbler, described as " a sweet polyglot, but hurrying."
In other lists reference is made to the way the grass-
hopper-warbler " chirps all night," to the stone cur-
lew's loud, nocturnal whistle, and the crooning song of
the nightjar in the night watches. The calling of the
cuckoo at night perhaps would not be included among
songs ; the wailing of peewits or the croaking of corn-
crakes; but it is remarkable that the sage of Selborne
omitted skylarks from his list, since they sing long
before dawn.

LAPWINGS are vigilant birds, and will wail and fly all
through a moonlight night. Wood-pigeons
Birds that will croon through the night-watches ;
Never house-martins in their nests in high sum-

Sleep mer keep up a prolonged warbling, as if they

can ill-brook the tedious hours when wings
must be folded. But the palm for sleeplessness perhaps
goes to our winter visitor, the Brent goose. Ducks tuck
their heads in their wings to sleep, as London citizens
well know, from watching their good-night rituals on
the margin of the Serpentine. The Brent never seems
to sleep at all — is seen to be awake when viewed by day
at sea, and is heard to be noisy all night. He may ask,
with Philomel and Milton, " What hath night to do
with sleep ? "

THE jay is on sentry-duty all day at this season. He is
never more vociferous than when he is
The courting, and woods ring with his raucous

Sentry cries, if primrosing trespassers pass his way.
Jay It is one of the harshest cries in nature that

74

BIRD NOTES

now greets anyone who approaches the bush where the
jay intends to nest. But a few weeks later, the nest being
built and the hen being on her eggs, you may pass the
nest as noisily as you please without a sound of protest,
though the jay's anxious eye — " wicked eye," the keeper
would call it — is closely watching your every movement.

" BIRDS that sing as they fly are but few," wrote White
of Selborne, and made a list, including only
Songs on lark, pipit, swallow, whitethroat, blackbird,
the Wing and wren. The thrush, as well as the
blackbird, will occasionally sing while
flying, sometimes while hopping after worms. The
little wood-warbler trills its summery song as it flutters
across the woodland glade. Goldfinches and linnets
seem so overflowing with happiness that they cannot
cease their songs for flight. Never does a linnet fly to a
pond to drink without twittering a grace on the wing,
before and after refreshment.

SOME birds with strong voices are exceedingly shy of
showing themselves, like the nightingale
The Reel and the corncrake, and the grasshopper-
Birds warbler, which is as timid as a mouse, and

lives a secretive sort of life under cover of
grasses or sedges. Like the nightingale, it sings its best
under the cloak of night ; or perhaps sings its very best
just as dawn is flushing. Then it mounts to some little
elevation, a twig or the top of a sedge, and with quiver-
ing form and widely-opened bill, with head turning
from side to side, shrilly utters the strange song which
earned it the name " Reeler." At the least alarm it
vanishes, like a concert singer leaving the platform.

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

THE pied wagtail's nickname, Peggy Dishwasher, has
puzzled many wise heads. " Wagtail " is
A also a curiosity of a name, since the restless

Diffident tail rarely " wags," but for ever flicks up
Minstrel and down. And this charming sprite of a
bird has been labelled with a puzzling
scientific name, " lugubris " ; possibly an ill-conceived
reproach for lacking in the whites or the canary-yellows
of other wagtails ; or perhaps because Peggy's mate is a
most diffident minstrel. He sings one song while the
chaffinch sings a thousand. But when he does oblige,
his voice is a low, pleasant warble.

LARKS' nests are marvellous for the art and ingenuity
with which they are hidden and made
The Larks' secure from the feet of cattle. The cunning
Treasury lark chooses a cup-like depression, and
therein so weaves, felts, and presses down
her nest of grass that its top edges are flush to the
ground's surface; it looks exactly as if some heavy
roller had run over it, to make it perfectly fit the cup.
Larks are timid, but the nestlings show a bold spirit,
pertly standing high on their legs, like gamebirds, if
alarmed.

ATTAR OF HAY

ALL the countryside is fragrant with the aroma of hay,
but even more fragrant is what an old-time

Honey- poet called the " bounteous smell " of such

suckle a bower of honeysuckle as is commonly

found festooning thatched cottages, and

looking in at their latticed windows. Here the honey-
76

ATTAR OF HAY

suckle is in its element ; as a moral writer on field-flower
favourites well remarks: " It seems to shed a happy
quiet and contentment." It is sweetest in the evening,
when intent on luring moths to its honey- vats, and
especially after rain: we can almost hear the raindrops
in Izaak Walton's description of a shower on his honey-
suckle hedge, " which fell so gently on the teeming
earth, and gave yet a sweeter smell to the lovely
flowers " — what time the birds were holding their
friendly contention with an echo.

TRAGEDY stalks with the mowers, as they begin to cut
the fields of hay, tearing away the veil
Death in which has given sanctuary to rabbit, field-
the mouse, hare, weasel or hedgehog, and many

Hay field a bird. The farmer finds what he calls
" stolen " nests of poultry or guinea-fowl.
The gamekeeper is fearful for the sitting partridge that
will sit so closely as to be caught by the mowers' knives.
Their eggs, and those of larks and pipits, possibly of a
corncrake, may be the perquisite of the rooks, which
march and countermarch across the shorn field, seeking
also nests with young voles. In the evening come other
hunters, like the farm cats, to pick up parent mice
searching for their nests and young.

THE sight of a young cuckoo on a haycock, being fed
by a meadow-pipit, impressed one with the
The idea that it is an ill-mannered bird. If it

Gowk had had the sense and courtesy to crouch

down, bringing its head to the little foster-
mother's level, she could have fed it easily; but as it
lifted its ugly head to the utmost height, she was

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

obliged to stand on its shoulders to drop food into the
cavernous mouth. When a farmyard cat stalked into the
meadow, the cuckoo paid no attention to alarm-cries,
only gaping for more food. It seemed as stupid as a
dotterel, and almost deserving its odious old-time
nickname of the " gowk."

DOWN THE LANE

LIKE a little flower of the air, the orange-tip butterfly
now zigzags down the parsley-bordered
The lane. The quidnunc notes the fallacy of its

Orange-Tip name, which falsely describes the female,
while the actual tips of the male's wings
are black. It was born a mimic. The caterpillars are
now found on seed-pods of hedge-mustard or lady's-
smock, and are marvellously like the pods, and keep
pace with them as they grow. When the butterfly rests,
it lays back its showy fore- wings, and elevates its hind
ones, whose greyish-green mottling blends magically
with the parsley's colour scheme.

To and from her hole in the old willow-tree goes the
leaf-cutter bee, fetching and carrying from
The a garden sections of rose-leaves for her

Upholsterer nest. Within the hole is some bee-bread,
Bee and her egg. With mandibles for scissors,

with exquisite art she cuts narrow pieces
of leaf for upholstering the sides of her cell, and circular
ones for the end, as round as if designed by a compass,
flying off with a triumphant hum, always on a bee-line
for the nest. Her toil finished, she dies; perhaps never
thinking that while she was away from the cells, an

78

TREE BIRDS

ichneumon fly laid eggs beside her own, whose grubs
alone will benefit by her labours.

MOTHS

HAWK-MOTHS in a room stir alarm in female breasts as
surely as the advent of a bat. They are the
Uncanny largest and handsomest of our moths, but
Moths have uncanny features. The beautiful
death's-head is regarded with superstitious
awe from its skull-like marking and its unique power
of uttering a squeak. The humming-bird hawk-moth
may not be recognized for a moth as it drifts into a
room, the curious tufts of hair fringing the body sug-
gesting a bird's spread tail, the wings beating so rapidly
as to invest the form with a sort of halo, and making a
droning noise. The bee-hawks resemble bees, and no
doubt gain by being dreaded in consequence.

TREE BIRDS

AN engaging picture is made by a family of young
green woodpeckers, as they emerge from
The the nest-hole; four are seen, perhaps,

Yaffle's clinging anxiously to the tree-trunk, stumpy
Family tails pressed close to the bark, while a
fifth surveys the green world from the
hole's entrance. Their first costume is of true feathers,
speckled in effect. In a silent wood the cry of the wary
head of the family rings out, loud and exultant, as the
youngsters leave the nest, a cry sometimes compared to
a shout of demoniacal laughter.

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

SOME naturalists have held that the provincial names of
birds should be discarded from serious
The works; this was the view of Knox, the

Galley- Sussex ornithologist, though he seems to
bird have approved of " barley-bird " for the

yellow- wagtail which comes at seed-time,
of " rinding-bird " for the wryneck, as it comes when
oaks are stripped, of " parson-gull " and " duck-
hawk," and of " yaffle " for the woodpecker. A happier
provincial name for this bird is still to be heard in
Kent — galley-bird. This must be an ancient name if
it comes from the Anglo-Saxon " gal," merry, in
reference to the laughing note that forebodes rain.

To hear in the woods to-day a wild screech from a jay,
and then to hear the wild laughing cry of
Jay and the green woodpecker, is to receive two
Yaffle strongly contrasting impressions. In the

early-Spring concerts of the jay — a sociable
bird when courting — there is a wonderful variety of
suggestive notes ; like a mocking bird he can neigh and
he can bleat, and like the little owl he can produce
sounds that might come from dog or cat. His harsh
scream leaves a suggestion on the mind of a bird whose
days are full of anxiety. But the yaffle's call is one of
the happiest in Nature.

TREE-LOVING birds often have their favourite trees;

thus, the willow- wren seems on its natural
The stage when spilling its silvery chimes from

Starling's the shining leaves of a riverside willow-
Tree tree. The starling is famed as a bird at

home everywhere; perhaps no bird is
80

TREE BIRDS

found nesting in so many different situations. It is
more at home in a tree than a blackbird, and runs
more swiftly over meadow or lawn, and is as much at
home on sea- cliffs, in marshes, or in woods as in city
squares. Yet the starling is certainly a great lover of the
walnut-trees now tardily coming into full leaf, and will
spend hours on a walnut perch, merrily whistling its
medley of notes, and clapping its castanets.

SPOTTED flycatchers are welcome little migrants, since
they come so faithfully back each season to
The the same garden nesting-sites. Quiet in

Faithful plumage and voice, they attract more
Flycatcher attention by their fly-hawking excursions
than many birds in gayer coats. The modest
flyfisher seems listless enough as it perches motionless
on post or rail, waiting for its prey, but always attracts
the eye by its manner of darting in sudden pursuit,
quickly returning to the perch to await the next victim.
Pairs — or possibly one pair — of spotted flycatchers have
been known to nest in a creeper against a house-wall
in nineteen Junes in succession.

THE pied flycatcher is a rare bird in Southern England,
but shows a marked devotion to Wales.
The Pied This is a choice little bird, and in its black
Gallant and white dress suggests a duodecimo
magpie. The hen is a quiet edition of her
mate, and has a quiet spirit, meekly suffering the some-
what imperious ways of her lord ; but he will charm her
by his song, often compared to a redstart's. And he
gallantly protects her, giving battle to neighbouring
flycatchers which trespass on his fly-fishing preserves.
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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

These birds would be warmly welcomed if they could
be wooed from Wales and the North to our insect-
plagued southern shires.

BULLFINCHES are remarkable among our finches for
going always in pairs in Winter and early
" Bully " Spring. They are among our birds which
attract more attention in those seasons than
in Summer, partly because their numbers are reinforced
by migratory birds. " Bully's " gay coat shows up
bravely against the quiet hues of the hedges he haunts
with his hen in their quest of dock seeds and berries.
The borders of large woodlands seem their favourite
nesting-place, and old, wild hedgerows. It is a pity that
the gardener's cherished buds lure them from their
natural haunts, often to their undoing, for by nature
they are stay-at-home birds, and great lovers of the
greenwood. «

WATER SPRITES

ONE pair at least of great crested grebes had safely
fashioned their floating nest, the birds
A Grebe taking turns in sitting on their four rough
Family eggs. Leaving the nest, they were careful
to cover the eggs with reeds, gathered by
the bills, thus hiding their treasures and keeping in the
warmth of the hotbed of sodden herbage. A charming
picture is now made by the precocious chicks, as they
induce their parents to tow them about the pond, by
gripping the parental feathers in their bills — (feathers
they are in the habit of eating) — seek shelter under their
wings, or, in the way of cygnets and baby dabchicks,
clamber up for pickaback rides.

82

TO THE WEST

AMONG rushes fringing a common's pond snipe are
always in evidence, and there is no mis-
A Worm taking their sign on the pond's margin,
Indicator where the probing of their long, straight,
sensitive bills has covered the mud with a
pattern of minute holes. No bird has a more sensitive
worm-indicator than the snipe in its nerve-lined bill,
and it is a perfect worm-catching tool, marvellously
flexible, so that no more than the tip need be opened to
nip the wriggling prey. The bird's eyes are set far back,
so that it may look behind it while the bill is buried.
And it has a quiet trick of stamping to put consternation
into the worms' hearts.

PERHAPS the humblest member of the reedbed's choir
is the reed-bunting, that contributes only
Voices of two or three notes, but does so with praise-
the Reeds worthy, if somewhat stammering, persis-
tence, as he perches near his nest on some
swaying reed ; time and again he seems to be crying the
words, " Don't hurt me! " The cock is an ornament of
the choir, with his black cap, white collar, and finch-
like bill. He is proud of his nest, of reeds, grass and
moss, delicately lined with hair or reed-flowers, and of
the handsome, purple-blotched eggs. A good-hearted
bird, he shares his mate's building labours, and takes
his turn in brooding the chicks.

TO THE WEST

ONE pleasure of going into the far West country is the

chance of seeing a buzzard soaring and

A Farmer's floating in its stately, buoyant, eagle-like

Friend way, or displaying a gift of hovering almost

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

the equal of a kestrel's. It is sad, indeed, that it should
be on the vanishing list of our large birds of prey, for
there is much good work in the world for a buzzard to
do in keeping down rats and mice, beetles, worms, and
other " varmints " on which it lives, rather than on its
own kind. But the buzzard is mistrusted by birds as
well as gamekeepers, and it is a fine sight to see a rook
making a dashing attack on the hawk, with the air of a
St. George going forth against a dragon.

FROM a fern-covered bridge spanning a Devon river
one may espy a hole in a bank where, for
Bejewelled years, kingfishers have nested. On a lucky
Birds day one may see six or seven fledglings,

which have passed from their dank cradle
into the exquisite river scene, all perched in line on a
branch, awaiting their rations. With the sun glittering
on their iridescent feathers, it is an almost dazzling
picture. Hitherto they have been kept closely at home
by their parents on their bed of fish-bones. They
would run grave risks if they ventured abroad until
well grown, since they put on their exquisite raiment,
the hens being as richly arrayed as the cocks, while still
in the nest.

84

JULY

JJU LfY

IN a Jacket of light Yellow, eating Cherries; with
his Face and Bosom Sun-burnt; on his Head a
wreath of Centaury and wild Tyme; a Scythe on his
shoulder, and a bottle at his girdle: carrying the sign
Leo.

THE DOG-DAYS

WITH July and the dog-days the midsummer hush falls
on the birds. But some voices which have
Hot July been somewhat drowned in the early
summer chorus attract the ear once more,
notably the twofold call of the chiffchafF; it sings its
best, indeed, in July. Bird-life is more abundant now
than at any time of the year, and every hedge is full of
strange notes uttered by the young birds. These are
great days of hunting for hedge- vermin, and for the
sparrow-hawk. All too often we hear sorrowful plaints
from bereaved bird-parents, echoing the feeling in
MacdufFs tragic words, " All my pretty ones — O hell-
kite ! — all at one fell swoop ! "

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

To observe the utmost devotion of mated birds to one
another one should look among the plain-
Lovely in hued and songless ones : thus the humble,
their Lives unadorned flycatcher is as fussy as a cock
partridge over his hen ; never far away, and
for ever popping titbits of food into her bill. When he
is proud of some feat of fly-catching — as when he has
taken a butterfly on the wing — he will land near the
nest whereon his mate sits, and give a peculiar call —
" Zit-zit! " She seems to know it means that he has
something really good to offer, comes off the nest, and
for five or ten minutes suffers herself to be fed, as
though she were a helpless nestling.

IT is woe to almost any insect that drifts across the

croquet lawn which a spotted flycatcher

The has made the headquarters of his summer

Croquet fly-fishing. The hoops serve him admirably

Lawn Bird as watch-towers, and as he continuously

makes his circular tours of the ground the

sharp click of his beak, closing on his prey, brings a

sense of the sternness of life to the quiet pleasure-lawn.

His way is to make a goodly collection of flies before he

hies to the nest to pass them to his young. He does not

hesitate to bring them bees, and he ranks with swallows

and nightjars as an expert butterfly hunter, a sport at

which sparrows and others are sorry bunglers. The

birds have a marked attachment for pleasure- lawns.

They are now building second nests, or sitting on

second clutches. The flycatchers are usually the last of

our summer bird visitors to arrive; they at once set

about nesting, with none of the usual delay observed by

other migrants, and it seems that they are kept so busy

88

THE DOG-DAYS

during their short Summer season that the cock has no
leisure at all for singing.

THE time of the clear heat upon the herbs is the time of
the birds' silence; but about the harvest
Songs of fields the yellow hammers and the corn-
the Corn buntings sing on perpetually, and there is
something in keeping with a sleepy noon-
tide of the dog-days in their monotonous chants. And
we owe a debt to the greenfinches for their tinkling
music of these days. Where a canary is set to sing in a
cage outside a cottage window, and a greenfinch sings
in a garden, it were hard to distinguish one strain from
another; or to note any difference in the happiness of
the free bird's song and the captive's. The greenfinch,
in his sage-green coat, yellow-trimmed, always appeals
to us as being among the happiest of birds, one that
must for ever be musically prattling, so that it will sing
on the wing. Wordsworth's title fits it well, " Brother
of the leaves."

A MINOR moorland pleasure of August (not shared by

insects) is coming eye to eye with a lizard

The Way as it basks in the heather — the lizard

of a which, if you neither move nor sigh too

Lizard loud (as it is written in " Aurora Leigh "),

" Will flatter you and take you for a stone."

Then it will flash about your feet (to say it runs is to

do scant justice to its amazing speed — it is seen and is

gone), or will itself sit so still that it might be lifeless,

if it were not for the light in the jewels of eyes. The

lizard enjoys a sun-bath when the noonday quiet holds

89

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the hill, but is active enough when an adder is on its
trail.

MEADOWLAND

" I CAN never read in Summer out-of-doors," said
Richard Jefreries, nor, he added, could he
Reading write: " Three words, and where is the
Out-of- thought? Gone." What makes reading
doors under some meadow-tree an almost hope-

less task to-day is the multitudinous insect
life attracted by the open page. Some midge, fly, spider,
ant, or ladybird, lands on the book every moment, and
small green grasshoppers seem to delight in the book
as a spring-board. Above the grass, in the light of a low
sun, the air is seen quivering with gold- winged mites.
Small wonder that the birds dearly love a shorn meadow
where every step, every peck with the bill, and every
wing-beat disturbs fresh game.

HAYMAKERS have scarcely left the shorn fields before
they are painted in gold once more by
The those dandelion-like flowers on which

Hawk's hawks feed (they say) to brighten their
Flower eyes. Few country people, whether learned
or " no scholards," can give these common
flowers of the chicory group their rightful names, many
of them amusingly descriptive, like yellow goat's-beard,
or Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon ; bristly ox-tongue, cat's-ear,
hawk-bit, hawk's-beard, and mouse-eared hawkweed —
the botanical hair-splitter has made out of this last
flower's genus over one hundred species. The handsome
orange hawkweed has earned, from its black hairs, the
quaintest name of all — Grim the Collier.
90

IN SHADIEST COVERT

IN SHADIEST COVERT

THE beech has an ill-deserved reputation for so keeping
out sunshine that no flowers will grow in
Under its shade, but many a beech-wood to-day
Greenwood has its floor covered by drifts of the curious
Trees plant, wood sanicle. Its leaves are very

decorative in their glossiness, and the ele-
gant way they are cut into lobes, and the minute white
flowers manage to make a goodly show by rearing them-
selves two feet high. The plant is interesting for its re-
putation as a healer of all inward hurts and outward
wounds, whence its name, from sano.

THE great beech- woods of the Chilterns offer a succes-
sion of floral pageants ; carpets of violets in
The Fox's April, seas of bluebells in May; and now
Flower the massed ranks of the foxgloves are
making one of the most magnificent wild-
flower shows of the year. So in Cornwall to-day the
foxgloves of the stone hedges blaze the trail of the moor-
land roads for miles. Individual plants are six feet high,
and may have some three hundred buds and blossoms. It
is often disputed whether the word " foxglove " has any-
thing to do with foxes ; but it is the fox's flower in that
it so often grows about his den in a sandy bank.

SWEET wild strawberries now ripen for the fairies'

dessert in beech- woods. And if housewives

Fairies' take the advice of worthy old Tusser, in his

Straw- sixteenth-century work, " Five Hundred

berries Points of Good Husbandry," they will

transplant the wildings to gardens, for

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

those that grow among thorns in the wood, " well
chosen and pricked, prove excellent good." Another
herbalist recommends that they be served in claret, and
remarks that in Devon they are so plentiful that they
may be gathered when riding on horseback; certainly
in a Devon lane they may be picked from the back of a
Dartmoor pony. An old name was " Straberry," and
" Straberry ripe " was among the old London street-
cries, a name possibly from the plant's habit of straying
by aid of its runners. On chalk downs one may come
upon beds of the wildings covering an acre or more. It
is a crop much neglected, in spite of its delicious, if
elusive, flavour. But in Paris, petites frais des bois are
sold at nearly every street corner. The plant is wonder-
fully decorative, with its charming trefoil leaves, and,
above, the glistening, drooping, red fruits, fit to make
a fairy's mouth water. A larger wild strawberry is
sometimes found, the Hautboy, standing for the first
result of efforts to cultivate the original wildings.

OVER THE HILLS

A WALK in Surrey, about Guildford, yields to-day a
botanical treasure in woad. Botanists are
Woad inclined to think that most of the woad we

come upon to-day is descended from plants
brought over from the Continent to be cultivated for
the sake of the dye. Yet this is a plant which has played
a great part in our nation's story, if the philologist is
right in tracing the word Briton to the Celtic " brith,"
or painted, signifying a man daubed, for lack of ward-
robe, in the juice of woad. Thus to this humble-looking
92

HEDGEROW PICTURES

plant, with its small yellow stars of flowers, we may owe
our chief race-name.

THE slopes of chalky downs are now bravely spangled at
night by glow-worm lanterns, shining with
Fairy a soft, green radiance, scores together in

Lamps favoured places, those, no doubt, where
snails abound. As glow-worms live on
snails, eating them out of hearth and home, the gardener
harassed by the summer's snail- plague might profitably
set his boy to collect the insects from the hills and
lanes, as country boys delight to do. And certainly the
glow-worms, when turned loose on a grassy bank or
" in a dell of dew," make a bewitching illumination for
the garden.

HEDGEROW PICTURES

AN aspiring great bindweed took a hitch round a hop
growing in a hedge, and, with or without
Climbers declaration of war, started climbing. The
at War struggle was a silent one, not spectacular,
but there was no doubt of its intensity,
plant struggling with plant for light and air. The bind-
weed is as artful as the hop is redoubtable in climbing :
put a prop six inches from a young bindweed shoot,
and it will reach out and find it, though the prop be
frequently moved by an inch or so. Yesterday the
bindweed out-topped the hop. Now it triumphantly
flaunts its enormous white trumpets from the hop's
highest spray, and they seem to be sounding a blast of
victory.

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

A TURTLE-DOVE sitting on an apology of a nest, a
scanty platform of twigs, is a common
The Dove's hedgerow picture of these days: as the
Nest dove's soft crooning (a sound well suggested

by the scientific name, " turtur ") is typical
of a dreamy midsummer afternoon. The nest never
fails to arouse wonder, having so few twigs that the
small white eggs are clearly visible from below. One
can only suppose that the flat, rough, draughty platform
must be an uncomfortable place whereon to sit on
hatching duty for a fortnight. A turtle which elected to
lay in a rook's old nest seemed to be endowed with an
unusual sense of comfort.

YOUNG THINGS

THE rearing-field, where the young pheasants are
learning their first life-lessons, is always a
The favourite haunt of wild birds, the pheasant

Pheasants' chicks' unbidden guests, sharing the sump-
Guests tuous meals provided four times daily by
their keeper. The keeper rather likes to see
robins, thrushes, starlings, and other birds, if not
rapacious, about the coops, as they clear up surplus
food, which might turn sour. The fowls, acting as
foster-mothers to the pheasants, are marvellously
vigilant; their heads seem to come through the bars
of the coops the moment the shadow of a hawk crosses
the field, and the little pheasants are as marvellously
obedient to the orders to take cover.

THE young of shy birds, like jays, are often engagingly
tame on first exploring the world, their confidence

94

YOUNG THINGS

The Art highly exasperating their parents. But the
of being a little jays have a smart, wide-awake air
Jay even in the nest, and are apt pupils in

mastering the art of avoiding life's dangers,
in when to scream and when to hold their garrulous
tongues. The old birds are model parents; the cock
does sitting duty, and there is no more danger for cock
than hen, since each is as gaily painted as the other.
The family party always seems on the best of terms,
the young staying with their parents almost to the
year's close.

MANY and peculiar are the trials of a young sea-bird,
like a razorbill. On seeing light, it is in
A peril from rapacious gulls. Then it must

Sea-Bird's face the hazardous feat of leaving the cliff-
Trials ledge for the sea: some fishermen declare

the parents carry the young by the necks.
At sea, they are at once distressed by their parents
diving, and set up disheartened cries. Later, if wintering
in the far North, there may be leagues of ice to be
crossed: and a hungry fox in waiting if they fail and
fall. The razorbill, now with young on almost all our
coast cliffs, is always of peculiar interest, as being a
small edition of its vanished relative, the great auk.

COB, the swan, is a proud bird to-day, with his grey-
billed, drab cygnets about him; his mag-
Trials of nificently proud bearing at once distin-
a Swan guishes him from his mate. The guarding
of her eggs during the long six weeks of
their hatching must have tested his devotion. Other
troubles come with moulting days, which mean that he

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

loses all his quills and the power of flight. The cygnets
now make incessant demands that he shall fish for
water- weeds. They have little of the precocity of ducks,
are babies enough to enjoy pickaback rides, and it will
be a year before they are promoted to white feathers.

A LITTLE grebe is seen buoyantly floating on a pond:
something causing alarm, it sinks like a
Birds Like plummet, until only its head is above the
Submarines surface. Danger still threatening, the head
sinks until only the tip of the bill is showing.
Other divers, ducks and cormorants, know the trick,
but ornithologists confess it passes their comprehension.
Young moorhens will hide by floating submerged
below lily-leaves, and have a trick, not usually
practised by more professional diving ducks, of using
wings as oars.

A YOUNG barn-owl, mistaking moonlit water for a solid
substance, flew from a tower of Bodiam
The Castle Castle, in Sussex, into the moat seventy
Owls feet below, and, becoming entangled in

water-lilies, was unable to rise. This feudal
castle is a thing of sheer beauty, its grey walls rising out
of water now sheeted with that white lily which the
poet demanded should be given him before the pas-
sionate rose:

A long-stemmed lily from the lake,
Cold as a coiling water-snake.

And, like snakes, the lilies to-day hold fast the un-
ruffled form of the floating bird.
96

CHILDREN OF LIGHT

THE MOAT

FLOATING serenely on the quiet waters of a moat, the
white and yellow water-lilies suggest rival
Water- beauties. The white-chaliced ones may
Lilies stand for chastity, but the gold cups of the

others suggest bibulous ideas : the curiously
alcoholic smell and the flagon-like shape of the fruit
having earned the name brandy-bottle. Old-time
botanists could hardly find words enough for praising
the white lilies. " There is I know not what of awful in
their beauty," wrote one enthusiast, and added, as
though driven by desperation to ungallantry, "It is
to all flowers what Mrs. Siddons is to all other women."

CHILDREN OF LIGHT

AN old and true observation is that the swifts are
most active in thundery weather: during
The Swifts' storms they are seen pursuing their head-
Serenade long courses as if they would race the
lightning. " Nice observers," as Gilbert
White remarked, have believed that when in hot
weather they form parties that race and scream above
villages, the cocks are serenading their sitting hens,
who answer, as the screechers rush by, with notes of
complacency. Other nice observers think with reason
that in late hours of July evenings the cocks play an
earnest game of pursuing the hens (which have left
their nests for an airing) to herd them back to their
duties for the night.

JULY is pre-eminently the butterfly month; in every
97 H

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Month of flower-garden dance these flowers of the
Butterflies air. Where they are cutting the oats, the
humble gatekeeper butterfly flits on zigzag
flight, living up to its name by settling on gate or wall ;
and lo, the harvest butterfly — the gorgeous peacock —
now airs its velvety wings. Many more species are
a-wing than last month. The brimstone's heyday
comes with July; and the fritillaries come on their
rich, golden-brown wings, chequered like the petals
of the fritillary flower. The comma is a late-comer,
too; unlike any British butterfly with its scalloped
wings, and their sign of the comma painted in white.
It is the month for the heavenly blue butterflies;
for the swallow-tail of the Fens, in yellow and black ;
and in town as well as country gardens the lordly red
admiral spreads his gorgeous wings to bask, disdain-
fully shaking them when any other insect comes be-
tween the sun and his nobility.

THE dandy dragonfly, hawking back and forth above a
pond's surface (trapping insects in the
Dance of hairs of the legs), turns with such magical
Dragonflies speed that one might think it has flown
backwards. Some of those engaged in egg-
laying cut strange capers on the pond's surface as they
continuously dip the tips of their slender bodies below
the water, with each dip dropping an egg or two of their
thousands to their fate. Others, having ovipositors,
carefully bore holes in weeds for the eggs. The eccentric
water-dances are seen on serenely bright days, as clouds
quickly pack the sun-lovers off, to sulk and sleep among
the reeds: sleeping so soundly that they may not stir
to a hand-touch.

98

AUGUST

AUGUST

AY O U N G Man of fierce and Cholerick aspect,
in a Flame-coloured Garment; upon his Head
a garland of Wheat and Rye, upon his Arm a Basket of
all manner of ripe Fruits, at his belt a Sickle, His Sign
Virgo.

MATINS AND EVENSONG

AFTER a tropical day and night, with no healing " cool
of the evening," a perfect hour comes at
Cool of the last with cockcrow. The light is quiet and
Morning grey at the opening of this ritual, and the
cool air vibrates with melody. Robin is the
first singer to rival the hedge-cricket; his warble sug-
gests an Autumn morning. A thrush utters a few phrases
next, and then loud and clear rings out the wren's
morning hymn, every note true, the trill perfect; at
intervals of a few seconds, he sings his hymn ten times.
Rooks drift over the fields, to settle in an elm, there to
caw forth their grace before breakfast. At an immense

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

height, against a rosy cloud, some small gnat-like
specks may be made out — a band of swifts at their
revels of dawn.

RAIN after drought turns' the earth into a new heaven
for myriads of thirsty creatures by reason
Pride of of the reappearance of worms ; they have
the rejoiced in the showers no less than the

Morning moles and birds so long denied a wormy
feast. Thrushes have terrible struggles in
rearing their young, and those are fortunate who find
out the dormitories of aestivating snails. Robins often
seem unequal to rearing second broods. Soft rains
appear to turn the swallows' heads with joy. There is
something human in the ecstasy of a band of swallows
and martins, a hundred strong, as they skim above the
surface of a river reach, while an early morning rain
falls like a blessing, and their eager calls tell how they
rejoice in the abundant insect food. In the West
Country they have a beautiful name for such a re-
freshing shower — " The Pride of the Morning."

As twilight deepens over the river, and the birds are at
their evensongs, there floats upstream the
The sound of a faint whistle. Nobody would

Otter's heed it save an angler, or some other quiet,
Pool still body. It is a peculiar whistle, not bird-

like and not quite human; and it carries a
message from the osiers to the trout which till now
have been rising freely: they rise no more. Another
whistle, a rustle of reeds, a swirl of dark waters, and
then a long, shadowy form glides up mid-stream. Two
shadows follow; mother otter has come to the pool to
102

HARVEST -TIDE

give her cubs their evening hour of play. Their play is
one of the prettiest of all wild animal pictures we may
hope to see. The pool is rippled all over as the otters
dart about the surface, and running swirls show where
their smooth, dark bodies are flashing beneath, to rise
and leap and frolic, and then float downstream con-
tentedly, with the tips of their rudders just above
water. The mother shows them how to dive in circles,
so as to come up behind sleeping fish. After their play,
the party heads downstream for the feeding-place.

HARVEST-TIDE

THERE are divers little pictures of corn-harvesting seen
only when evening peace has settled over
The Fox in the fields. One is that of rabbits stealing
the Corn out of the standing corn, in a field partly
reaped, for an evening meal and gambol.
Suddenly a quiet observer may note that every rabbit
of one side of the crop has bolted back to cover ; on the
other side some are sitting up to listen. Nothing un-
usual is to be heard ; but just within the jungle of the
stems is an ominous red-brown shadow. A fox is
working through the corn, up- wind. When only a few
stalks separate him from the nearest rabbit, perhaps
three yards away, he crouches for his spring. He may
not take the near rabbit; but we may be sure the one
taken out of scores is the one he fancies most for supper.

THE corn-bunting comes to the fore with harvesting,

and once again we are impressed by his singular

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Bird of character. He is so strangely lacking in the
Harvest bird-graces, and is such a picture of in-
dolence as he sits for long, idle spells on the
cornfield's hedge. When he flies, on an undulating
course, with a whirr of wings, the wing-beats are
laboured and intermittent, as if he will not make one
more than necessary, and the lazy effect is heightened
by the way the legs hang down. He seems even bored
by his own song; beginning it vigorously, he soon
ends it in a confused medley, as if many notes were
uttered at once. Yet we like the bunting. He seems to
take such a languorous joy in sunshine, and somehow
his splintered notes are in pleasing harmony with sun-
drenched cornfields.

THE nimble little harvest mouse seems to deserve
better luck than it has in this life, for it is
An All- among the most capable of beasties — an
round expert nest-builder, a gymnast that can run

Mouse down a corn-stem with the help of its
grasping tail, a skilled fly-fisher — withal a
thrifty character with a habit of storing grain. Then it
is fortunate in finding winter harbourage in stacks. It is
little in our thoughts in winter or, indeed, in summer
either, since it is so small and swift that it escapes
notice, in spite of the bright fawn of its topcoat. But
now and then it is found in winter, asleep in a bird's
nest. There is evidence that at times the mice will make
homes for themselves, as they have been found sleeping
among reeds in warbler-like nests cunningly placed at
a height safe from rising waters.

To many beside gamekeepers there is a deep interest in
104

MUI R FOWL

The watching the eviction of the cornfield's

Miniature summer guests as the reapers make their
Partridge rounds. This week, from a south country
field, the harvesters, some onlookers, and a
watchful gamekeeper were surprised to see a quail head
away before the machine. The bird was very taking to
the eye, " as purty as a partridge," as one man said: in
many ways it is a miniature partridge. The decrease of
quail in this country (though in some seasons it is more
abundant than in others) is put down to the bird-netters
of Southern Europe.

AN old idea among country folk is that the yellow
hammer sings loudest in the afternoon,
Afternoon about three and four o'clock. While young
Songs grouse now face the music of the butts,

young partridges are about to come of
age, and young swifts set sail overseas, the yellow
hammer still has helpless young, or hopefully sits on
eggs, being one of our latest nesters, though beginning
betimes. This may account for it singing on through
August by the hour together. Its monotonous chant is
a fitting accompaniment to the drowsy heat of a corn-
field in the afternoon, when the harvesters rest in the
hedge for the refreshment known as " fourses."

MUIR FOWL

GROUSE, crouching in heather, mingle so magically
with the stems and blooms that a stranger
The on the fells fails to see one close at hand.

Bonnie But the moorland keeper's trained eyes
Muir-hen detect birds at a distance — by the least

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

movement of a head or the glow of a comb; one old
keeper, asked to explain, in the name of all things
wonderful, how he saw the distant birds, would say:
" Why, sir, I just kenned the turn of his nob," or,
" I kenned the red on his kame." It is the sheen of the
feathers among the bells which takes the seeing eye, as
Bobbie Burns knew when he sang of Phoebus, jealous
of the bonnie muir-hen's plumage, taking a shot at her :

He levell'd his rays where she bask'd on the brae —
His rays were outshone, and but mark'd where she
lay.

" THE Twentieth " usually finds young blackgame
hardly bigger than quail, and cocks hardly
Blackcock to be distinguished from hens, the young
and resembling their sober-hued mother. When

Greyhen grown, no British birds are more strikingly
different as to plumage of cocks and hens.
It will be mid- September before the young blackcock
comes into his strength, and takes pride in his spreading
tail. When fully developed, with his blue-black plumage,
lyre-shaped tail, white-barred wings, and scarlet eye-
brows, he is smartly arrayed indeed for the admiration
of the plain brown hens.

THE mellow call-note of the curlew, " quoi, quoi," is
now heard again on coasts whence they
The departed in April, to nest on moor and fell.

Curlew's The wary birds, the noisiest of wildfowl,
Vocabulary constantly exchange cautionary notes, and
have fully a dozen variations of their com-
monest call, the wild, musical whistle suggesting their
106

SEA THOUGHTS

name. The wild-fowler knows from their cries how the
birds are occupied, distinguishing alarm-notes from
those of satisfaction, anger, or excitement over treasure
trove. One old-time punt-gunner speaks of the uproar
made by a suddenly startled flock of curlew as an out-
rage on the decencies of the night — it spreads the alarm
for miles across the mud-flats.

SEA THOUGHTS

FEW save mariners know that nomad of the seas, the
stormy petrel, for when he does come to
Mother some of our lonely shores to make a nest
Carey's he proves himself a fly-by-night. This is
Chickens the midget of sea birds. Mariners say that
scarcely a day passes in any sea without
bringing its petrels to view. They dance as happily
under the crest of the wildest waves as they skim over
the glassy surface of an equatorial ocean, stretching
down one slender foot after another the while, as if
walking on water. And they seem to fly for ever without
tiring, by day and night, hovering to feed on the wing.
In the days of the wind-jammers they were famed for
the faithful way they followed one ship, in storm and
calm, giving comfort to the mariners, being birds of
good omen.

GAYEST of all flowers of the beach is the horned poppy

(so called from its foot-long pods) now

The flaunting its golden, crumpled petals as near

Seaside the sea as it dare venture, making splashes

Poppy of sunshiny colour on pebbly shores and

cliffs. For five Summer months it keeps its

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

blossoms ; gales scatter its gold, but fresh blooms rapidly
succeed the fallen. The thick, leathery leaves are typical
of what botanists mean by glaucous : blue-grey, or sea-
green, they endure through Winter. The peculiar hue
gave the botanical name *' Glaucium," which possibly
enshrines the memory of the Boeotian fisherman who
turned into a sea-god.

THE DOWNS SO FREE

DAINTIEST of bell-flowers are the harebells, the blue-
bells of Scotland, now ringing their silent
August's chimes on the downs. They were ever
Bluebells favourites with poets ; Clare, the Northamp-
tonshire bard, spoke lovingly of these
" Little bell-flowers, pearly blue, that trembling peep."
Among other wild campanulas the nettle-leaved bell-
flower, throatwort of old, is abundant to-day in hillside
woods, the true original Canterbury bell. Most ex-
quisitely delicate is the ivy-leaved bell-flower, a fairy,
azure gem of mountain bogs, a lover of the spring which
loves the ravine haunted by the ring-ouzel, and those
water- sprites, the dipper and the grey wagtail.

ON Juniper Hill, on the North Downs, the silvery-
green berries of its junipers now make a
The Gin goodly show, but it will be a year before
Tree they take on their blue-black hue; ripe

berries among them are last year's crop.
Our juniper, though it may grow to be twenty feet
high, is not the Biblical shade-giving juniper, the name
having been given to a sort of broom of the wilderness.
A wealth of other lore clings about it, as that the
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THE PASSING OF SUMMER

fragrant wood, when burnt, " driveth away all noisome
serpents," while the berries taken in wine are good for
adder bites. Juniper stands, of course, for gin, a word
derived from the French for the shrub, " genievre,"
and the French brew a cordial from juniper berries and
barley.

A WOODLANDER

AN alarming-looking insect is Sirex gigas, the giant-
tailed wasp, now abroad in woodlands; a
A Super super wasp, with a thick body an inch and
Wasp a half long, and, if a female, with what

looks like a mammoth sting projecting for
another half-inch — the ovipositor. It wears the wasp's
colours, yellow banded with black; its huge eyes are
like black beads ; its transparent wings are of old-gold ;
and it lacks the wasp's waist. The ovipositor is a wonder-
ful compound instrument, toothed to act as a file for
boring holes in trees for the eggs; it will even pierce
lead. A fearsome insect: but it is without any power to
sting.

THE PASSING OF SUMMER

A FORGOTTEN festival, highly honoured of old at this
season, was rush-gathering for lights and
Green many other purposes; the poet Clare pic-

Grow the tured himself kneeling with the shepherd's
Rushes O ! boy on a bed of rushes, plaiting and mutter-
ing nameless songs. Botanists note a score
of species of rushes of marsh, sea, heath and wood ; the
wood-rushes having the name " Luzula," perhaps from
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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

the Italian " lucciola," a glow-worm, the flowers
sparkling so brightly when wet with dew. The giant of
the tribe is the great sea-rush of Western coasts, with
leaves so sharp that they cut the hand, and flying
insects are impaled on the points.

How many people, not being of Devonshire, could
translate this passage of dialect from a
Rustic Devonshire book? — " Aye, zure; and her,
Fruit leaning over the hatch, look'd delighted to

Names zee es, and wid always dole out something —
a tetty o' rosen, or ripe deberries, christ-
lings, or mazzards, or crumplings." A tetty is a nosegay ;
deberries are gooseberries, and the other names stand
for plums, cherries and small apples. From Devonshire
come some of the quaintest rustic names for apples:
from pigs'-noses, flesh-and-blood, sweet-ladens, bitter-
sweets, buff-coats, winter wardens, and leather-hides
(a name known to Shakespeare) to varpneys (four-a-
penny).

SPLENDID shows of sunflowers to-day remind one that
their heads, dried and well-saved, make
Lure for attractive lures to titmice if set up on sticks
Tomtits in winter. The way the little tits dart at the
great discs reminds one of arrows in flight
for a target. A sparrow or finch may settle on the head
for a steady feast, and make demonstrations against the
tits, but by their dash and quickness the little blue birds
gain their share of the seeds. The sunflower has an old
name, Turnsole, from the idea that it turns with the sun,
turning on its god, as Moore sang, the same look when
he sets as when he rises.

no

THE PASSING OF SUMMER

THE time of dahlias being at hand, the gardener sets his
traps for earwigs, with little heed of the
Mother mother earwig's need of his dahlia petals
Earwig for food for her young, or of her devotion
in climbing the tall stalks with the intention
of converting the petals into a kind of dahlia porridge.
She is credited with all a hen's solicitude for her chicks.
Laying the eggs near a plant about to blossom, the ear-
wig sits on the clutch, hatches a score or more of white
offspring, and broods over them with the devotion of a
partridge. She warns them of danger by striking the
ground with her antennae, as the rabbit thumps with its
hind legs. The garden robin, by the way, is a mighty
earwig hunter.

Now with treble soft, " The redbreast whistles from a
garden-croft " — for the week has brought
Robin's us to the opening of the robin's autumn
Autumn song-season. He sings quietly to-day, often
Ode in an undertone; it is as if a flute-player,

after an illness, should reach his hand for
the flute not touched for many weeks, to try over a few
notes. Robin has been feeling sorry for himself, and
has been skulking in hiding, while moulting. Though
he is back in his old garden haunt, times are still
anxious; his young grow apace, though some have yet
to sport red waistcoats. They must be placed in the
world, and may show fight before he can regain his old
prerogatives as cock of the garden walk.

A FAMILIAR moth of the day, a haunter of gardens and
houses, is the magpie, a moth of dauntless spirit ; though

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Moths a day-flier, it seems to find protection from
Like Birds the birds in its black-and-white motley,
as does its caterpillar, that arch lover of
currant leaves. The magpie is remarkable in keeping the
same colour-scheme when a moth as in earlier stages of
life, as though it could wish for no better protective
arrangement. We have one moth which not only has
bird-like markings, but suggests a bird's form, the
Emperor moth of the moors, which, when seated on
its heathery throne, wears a curious look of an owl. The
curved and plump body suggests an aggressive beak,
which may well scare the birds.

THE affairs of a pair of swallows which nested half-way
down the open chimney of a village inn
The have been watched with mild interest by

Chimney the village topers. Nowadays it is rare to
Swallows find swallows entitled to their old-time
name, " chimney swallows." Possibly these
birds are descendants of a pair which built in the same
risky site a hundred years ago. The young birds have
joined forces with others bred in the inn's outbuildings,
and in a party a score strong spend idle morning hours
basking on the inn roof, where their parents also rest,
with much joyous warbling, for long spells, as if con-
serving strength for a voyage in prospect.

THE swallows, now beginning to congregate, know only
one bird of prey which has the habit of
The hunting them in this country, our rare little

Swallows' summer visitor, the hobby. Though mar-
Owe vellously fast, he has no easy task in hawk-
Enemy ing swallows, though they may be gathered

112

THE PASSING OF SUMMER

in thousands. The pack rises ; the falcon circles higher,
till almost out of sight ; but though he then swoops like
a meteor, he may have to rise and swoop several times
before striking. One gamekeeper has a story of a hobby
taking a swift which yet managed to escape its talons,
and though hotly pursued, and swooped upon time after
time, made good its escape.

GOING — going — gone ! is the order of the day with the
swifts. Their flashing forms, on their
Our scythe-shaped wings, and their wild

Almanac screeches, are always much missed when
they disappear, in the dim dawn of an early
August day, from thatched cottage eaves of village
streets. The cottagers' cats must miss them, too; cats
that may have spent half the summer hoping to capture
a swift on the wing as it almost brushes the ground on
entering a low nest. Gilbert White remarked that the
cats of Selborne sometimes succeeded in this ambition.
Alas! that summer goes on the swifts' sooty wings.

12..

SEPTEMBER

AM E R R Y and cheerful Countenance, in a
Purple Robe, upon his Head a Wreath of red and
white Grapes, in his Left hand a handful of Oats,
withall carrying a Horn of Plenty, full of all manner of
ripe Fruits, in his Right hand the Sign Libra.

THOUGHTS ON HUNTING

" THE First " has brought again that familiar sound of
autumn evenings in the country, the uneasy,
After the melancholy calling of the partridges after
Shoot being dismayed and scattered by gunfire;

and the familiar picture of unwontedly
agitated birds roaming the fields, seeking for the missing
members of the covey. The search may go on long after
twilight, as the calling testifies: " Perdix — Perdix! "
that rasping cry, so well likened to a rusty key turning
in a lock. Search parties may be organized, some of a
covey hunting the turnips, while others call in the
stubbles. The covey which has suffered heavily doubt-
less seeks consolation by joining forces with another.

"5

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

THE cock partridge is supposed to be distinguished from
the hen by a brighter " horseshoe " of
Partridge chocolate on the breast ; but hens may sport
Feathers this badge. The expert distinguishes the
sexes by differences in the wing-covers, a
chestnut touch on the cock's feathers, and cross-bars
of buff on the hen's, lacking in her mate's plumage.
Now and then white horseshoe badges are seen, and
black ones are worn by the species from Asia (the
bearded partridge), which comes in ice to our markets.
Then we have a " mountain partridge," a plain bird in
red and buff. Birds of the year are easily distinguished
by the badge of their yellow legs.

SPORTSMEN usually held that when a covey of part-
ridges rises, the admirable cock parent goes
The first: and is likely to fall first. When the

Admirable covey goes to " jug " in some dry hollow in
Partridge mid-field the cock keeps sentinel with
never-failing vigilance. The birds may be
in a wide circle, each apart from its neighbour, but in
cold weather twenty will huddle on a spot a yard in
diameter, those on the edge breast outwards. When
there is an alarm, clear above the loud, sudden whirr of
all wings is heard the parent cock's directing call.

THE French partridge is curiously limited in its range,

favouring* south-eastern England, and

Foreign haunting waste places scorned by our

Partridges brown birds. The way it prefers running to

flying has forfeited some respect, and the

gourmet says it lacks the flavour of the common

partridge. Like other foreign red-legs, it is distinguished

116

THOUGHTS ON HUNTING

from our native birds by its call. Possibly some other
foreign partridges, like the Greek red-leg, might thrive
in this climate, and we could hardly have too many of
a family which deserves more than the qualified praise
of the old couplet :

If partridge had the woodcock's thigh,
'Twould be the best bird that e'er did fly.

WE have sympathy for the pheasants, partridges and
hares (if little for foxes) when deprived of
Gleaners sanctuary by harvesting, but a multitude of
creatures benefit, the ultimate gleaners of
the fallen grain. The woman gleaner has passed from
the picture, and the birds are left undisturbed in the
stubbles. Flocks of sparrows — many of them Cockneys
— and other finches there find an easy living. Pheasants
draw out from the woods for the grain, and partridges
come from the roots. At night is heard the voice of
many another picker-up of unconsidered trifles, the
wood-owl hooting melodiously, and the little owl
making all manner of weird, excited noises, as they
enjoy in the stubbles their best rat- and mouse-hunting
of the year.

IN September, blackgame become attractive to the

sportsman over the Border. After long

Black- days among the grouse he enjoys the change

Game from the unvarying leagues of purple

heather of the moor to rambling up some

wild, rocky glen, where a hill-burn has cut a tortuous

ravine, the sides overgrown with heather, bracken, and

birch, the favourite haunt of young blackgame. The

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

blackcock, with his blue-black plumage, white wing-
bars, scarlet wattles, and lyre-shaped tail, is perhaps the
handsomest of our game-birds. He takes a long time —
from early June till mid-September — to mature, and
through the summer is ,jhe tamest of game-birds ; but
later he becomes one of the wildest. In a mild autumn
he may be obsessed by amatory ardour, fantastically
dancing before the hens, his fine tail expanded, and
wings trailing, as if courting days had come.

THE cub-hunting season has opened, and already some
cubs have proved themselves stout foxes.
Cubbing For the cubs, as for hound-puppies and
Days young hunters, a hard schooling begins.

The cubs have a short time for learning all
about the realities of a fox's life, since by November
they must rank as grown foxes. Gone are the glorious
days in the cornfields, with game on all sides. The
family begins to break up, instead of lying together in
the coverts at night, dreaming of the roosting long-
tails; though echoing barks show that the cubs may
keep touch until finally scattered by hounds.

HARVEST-HOME

ALL good country people go to harvest festival. Many

who attend are rarely seen in church ; if the

Harvest gamekeeper is present so also is the

Festival poacher. Harvest decorations appeal to all;

the great sheaves of corn in the chancel, the

apples on the window ledges, that set the choir-boys'

mouths watering, the giant marrows, and loaves about

the font, the garlands of travellers '-joy that festoon the

118

SEPTEMBER BIRDS

oak gallery, and the scarlet dahlias that so finely set off
parson's surplice as he mounts the pulpit. All sing the
old hymns of harvest-home with lusty goodwill. The
preacher's favourite text, as is well known, is from
Habakkuk, and his discourse is familiar, but he touches
all hearts anew.

SEPTEMBER BIRDS

THE turtle-dove has slipped away overseas, but we may
still hear the wood-pigeons uttering their
The plaintive songs, and they come more into

Cushat evidence as the year wanes and the Con-
tinental flocks come in. A wandering tribe,
they are here to-day among the beechmast and gone
to-morrow to a place of acorns, a stubble, a clover-lea,
or turnip-field. The feeding pack makes an amusing
spectacle, as the rear rank birds continually fly forward
to a front place, so that the whole seems on the move,
save for the hedge-sentries. Pitching into their roosting-
place from the skies, flight following flight, always
flying into the wind, the pigeons make attractive targets
to the sportsman. They are marvellously vigilant; at
night in the wood we have put them out of the trees
by the striking of a match, and the crack of a twig seems
to mean to them as much as gun-fire.

A CHARMING bird-note of Autumn is the reappearance

of many feathered friends long lost to

The sight, family cares and moulting trials having

Garden sent them into mysterious retirement. The

Birds blackbird comes boldly from the shrubbery

where he has been skulking, in his Black-

119

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

foot Indian way. The robin settles for the winter at the
sign of the garden croft. Blue tits, growing daily more
yellow and blue, begin again to patronize the sign of the
swinging coconut. After long silence it is touching to hear
a revival of the willow-wren's song, that little grace he
offers up before slipping overseas. Sportsmen, going
out after partridges on some lonely sheep-walk, en-
counter the mistle-thrushes that nested in their
orchards, their roaming bands feasting heartily to-day
at the sign of the hawthorn bush.

As Autumn waxes many birds have a way of attracting
our special attention, having been some-
Finch what lost to sight in the crowded summer

Lovers days ; thus the bullfinch is now conspicuous
as it haunts the wayside hedge, searching for
dock-seeds and fruits, showing a special weakness for
privet berries. Migratory bullfinches come in to swell
the numbers of this most handsome species, so musical
in voice and so engaging in manner. Unlike their tribe
in general, it is rare to find more than a pair of bull-
finches together. And no finch is more deeply devoted
to his mate than Bully : all through the Winter they are
inseparable.

WHERE a family of seven swallows settled in July on a

sunny barn-roof near a village, their age-old

Swallows trysting place, three to four hundred now

Mustering gather of a morning, filling the air with

their warbling. All will fly as one on what

can only be a joy-flight, rising to an immense height,

as if hopefully looking for the sea. Other flights are

from fear. Every swallow on the roof takes instantly to

120

SEPTEMBER BIRDS

wing when there rings out from above the farm the
shrill, petulant cry of a kestrel. It was only extracted
from the innocent mouse-hunter by the bullying of the
farmyard pigeons. But the swallows take no chance of
being prevented from sailing on their holiday.

THE flight of the wagtail is so erratic as to suggest it
cares not where it goes. We may suppose
The that the wagtails which now emigrate may

Wayward be surprised to find themselves at sea;
Wagtail others may wonder why they never see
foreign lands. As day by day Peggy Dish-
washer dances waywardly about some sunny stable-
yard, or acts the part of a lily-pond's nymph, or of
sprite on a lawn, it gives us a remarkable example of a
bird disdaining, or perhaps forgetting, to follow the
general custom of its kind. Another strange example is
the unsociable starling, which is content to whistle from
a chimney-pot the Autumn through though its brethren
flock after adventures.

THIS month the little Jack snipe comes faithfully back
— all things having gone well with it
The Deaf through the Summer in Northern Europe
Snipe ' — to the self-same clump of rushes which
gave it shelter in the water-meadow last
Winter. The French call it " the deaf snipe," from the
way it lies low if danger threatens, so that it may
almost be trodden underfoot before it rises, to flit off
on butterfly-like flight — and to drop unexpectedly just
when the sportsman thinks it has reached a fair distance
for a shot. The classical story of the Jack snipe tells how

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a solitary bird gave an Irishman all his sport every
season for years.

SEPTEMBER'S FLOWERS

AMONG the surprising flowers which choose to bloom in
September is the dainty orchis, the autumnal
Lady's lady's tresses, a new arrival on the downs,
Tresses among the harebells, the eyeb rights, and
other remnants of Summer's flora. A
peculiarity of the plant is that its leaves do not appear
until the flowers begin to expand. In the evening, the
minute, white, waxy flowers, but a fraction of an inch
in diameter, are fragrant. The plant takes its name
from the way the flowers rise spirally up the stem (the
direction of the spiral varying in different specimens),
and suggest the flowing waves of plaited hair.

WHERE there were anemones in April, giant teazels now
rear their flower-heads six feet high, and
The the moats formed by their splendid leaves

Teazel's catch and drown the flies and caterpillars,
Trap that have ventured into the trap. The least

showers, and dews in time of drought,
fill the cups which the leaves form as they clasp
the stem, and they have a fatal attraction for insects.
The teazel is as bold and defiant as the anemones
were lowly and humble, and bristles with spines which
defend the stems, and make a terrible array along the
midribs of the lance-shaped leaves, while the spiny
fine-pointed bracts curve gracefully upwards until they
overtop the flower-head they guard, with its curious
circular bands of lilac blossoms. This plant is Venus 's
122

SEPTEMBER S FLOWERS

Basin, and the rustic beauty who bathes her face in its
waters is safe from warts and freckles.

ONE of the brightest small flowers of the day is eye-
bright, whose fresh look, as it grows in
A Herb clumps on chalk hills, seems to belie the
of Grace passing of Summer. The minute white
flowers are flecked with rose and purple,
and with one daring yellow spot for the eye's pupil. At
the least touch the plant comes up in the hand from
the down turf: for it is a parasite. Certainly it brightens
the pilgrim's eye, and deserves to be named from
Euphrosyne. It was with eyebright, according to
Milton, that the archangel, Michael, gave Adam a
seeing eye; and Culpeper said that if it were used
commonly as an eye-lotion, it would go far to ruin
the spectacle-makers.

PERHAPS our most adventurous wild-flower is the
humble shepherd's purse, which blossoms
A all the year round, and seems to make its

Vegetable fortune wherever it goes. Some of its
Adventurer country names enshrine the idea that it is
a roguish vagabond. The heart-shaped
pods gave it the tragic name, " Pick-your-mother's-
heart-out," and " Pick-purse," but a name to its credit
is " Poor Man's Parmecetie," hinting at healing virtues,
for which it was extolled highly by George Herbert in
his " Country Parson," as it yields a medicine " easy
for the parson's purse." It has followed civilization into
all temperate regions of the earth, to seize, in the spirit
which builds empires, every spot which man tills.
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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

FLY-BY-NIGHTS

WHEN we light our candle in the evening Daddy Long-
legs now comes blundering to the flame, an
Daddy engaging creature causing amusement by
Longlegs his stilt-like legs. His appearance on the
Autumn scene is heartily welcomed by
sparrows and others, including the lordly cock pheasant,
who cuts a ludicrous figure by eagerly darting after the
elusive tit-bit. If Daddy be viewed through a magnifying
glass, a quiet beauty is revealed in the slender, tapering
brown body, the gauzy wings, the exquisite antennae,
and the immense eyes. But it is a comical sight to see
the female laying her countless eggs in the grass, per-
forming her stilt-like dance the while. The pestilential
leather-jackets that hatch out become a favourite fare
of the rooks, who, by their destruction, earn more
thanks than some farmers give.

TYPICAL moths of Autumn have none of the mid-
Summer glory of the red admiral butterfly,
In but wear Autumn's colours, in harmony

Autumn's with the flotsam and jetsam of the Fall;
Livery mimicking faded leaves, and decaying wood
wherein they may hide for the winter. The
drab noctuag, which feed on ivy-blossom, are much
alike in their greys and browns, and, except for opal-
gleaming eyes at night, would easily escape notice. At
the fall of the leaf comes a typical Autumn moth, the
mottled umber, in a brown and buff dress of subdued
beauty. The wingless female looks more like a spider
than a moth as she sits on a tree-trunk, luring her late-
flying lovers.

124

DOOMSDAY

DOOMSDAY

WASPS begin to grow sleepy, and may sting us as they
lurk drowsily in unexpected hiding-places.
Last Days The young queens, who have contributed
of Wasps nothing to the welfare of the colony, and
have lived luxuriously, feeding and being
fed, have mated with their chosen princes among the
idle drones, and now go into retreat; hanging by their
jaws to some such support as the straw of a thatched
roof, with legs and wings folded entering the blessed
state of dormancy. The old queen, the mother of
thousands, dies as Winter comes on, and the workers
slay the larvae, in the cells of their crumbling home, as
their last act in life.

THERE is much to charm us in the nature of Bombus, the
humble-bee ; as was made clear when a little
The girl was discovered in a garden trying to

Humble- imprint a kiss on a drowsy bee's furry coat.
Bee's End She is a long-suffering and patient creature,
and has a pleasant way of humming songs
to herself as she flies. Her days are numbered, and we
mark the patience with which she waits her end.
Bombus, feeling drowsy one evening, is too lazy to
leave her floral tavern, and dies in her dreams.

BOMBUS is inflicted with just such a cuckoo as makes a
dupe of the hedge-sparrow ; but the cuckoo-

The Bee's bee goes farther in deception than the

Cuckoo cuckoo-bird, in appearance mimicking its
host. There is the difference that the

humble-bee carries on its thighs hairy baskets for

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

pollen, but the parasites have no baskets, as they have
no need of pollen, for their offspring. The cuckoo-bee,
moreover, having found a humble-bee's nest in a hedge-
bank, may kill the queen-mother in occupation. Then,
with stolen wax, it makes cells, and lays eggs, whose
grubs the workers of the colony will feed.

. \

THE KEEPER'S CARES

A WET September brings anxious days to the game-
keeper, whose heart is with his pheasants.
The Bird They are fast losing their sanctuary in the
of Next corn, and if, on coming in to the coverts,
Month they find them dripping with moisture, the
ground sodden, they are likely to seek other
quarters. They are always particular about keeping their
plumage dry, and when once they go into the open to
air their feathers, may take much longer walks than
pleases the keeper of a small manor. Wandering on
along the hedgerows, springing up after blackberries, or
pursuing that arch clod-hopper, daddy-longlegs, they
pass unawares over the boundary, where another game-
keeper may be eager to make them welcome.

As September passes, the pheasant broods begin to
break up, and the young birds cut their
Winning apron-strings, deserting their mothers. The
Their young cocks' feathers begin to shine; they

Spurs feel themselves fine fellows, and challenge

one another to duels. The plaintive " Peep-
peep " note of infancy changes to a croaking " Cock-
up," as different from the veteran cocks' ringing crows
as the treble caw of a nestling rook from the parents'
126

THE KEEPER'S CARES

solemn bass. In these Autumn days the cocks tend to
keep much together, and so remain until March, and
the veterans no doubt now give the youngsters some
advanced lessons in the use of their wings, legs and
spurs.

127

OCTOBER

IN a Garment of Yellow and Carnation, upon his
Head a garland of Oak-leaves with Akorns, in his
Right hand the Sign Scorpio, in his Left hand a Basket
of Medlars, Services, and Chestnuts; and any other
Fruits then in Season.

ARTFUL DODGERS

THE first day of October brings a thought for the

pheasants; and the bird of the day is the

October's wily old wild-bred cock, after whom a few

Bird may go in pursuit — as when he inhabits

some lonely, outlying spinney at the mercy

of poachers. It is certain that he will grow ever more

wary as the season advances. Old boundary hedges are

a favourite haunt to-day, where he still enjoys the

blackberry season; and isolated copses, reed-beds, or

any wild, rough ground. He will run a mile before

taking wing, and is full of tricks ; if cornered, he has a

magic way of disappearing, by squatting, or putting a

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

tree-trunk between himself and the guns. A lordly old
cock, with emerald neck and burnished collar and be-
jewelled breast shining in the October sun, as he
swaggers about a clearing where acorns are to be picked
up, is surely the most brilliant of British birds.

HOUNDS and horseman, a gallant company, disturbed
the early-morning nap of an old red fox.
The Wily Maybe he knew well enough that his cubs
One were the rightful quarry of cub-hunters,

and that several weeks of grace were his
due before real hunting began. But he was too old to
take any chances ; he was up and off like a red streak
at the moment he awoke, heading down a long, straight
narrow ride, with a hedge at one end, and open country
beyond. Fast as he went away, they pressed him hard ;
and suddenly he changed his mind. Just short of the
hedge a side-leap took him into the thick stuff. He
sneaked round a great clump of bramble, and lay low.
Hounds crashed past, and took the hedge; as the last
stern went over, there was one person who saw how the
old fox stole back by the way he had come — perhaps to
finish his nap.

SONGS AND REVELS

DAWN, on summery October days, is greeted by a

chorus of bird song that is like an echo of

The Spring. The robins now form the main

October choir, as did the blackbirds in May; every

Chorus cock robin of the countryside sings his

sweetest as day breaks. In the hour after

sunrise the rooks visit their nest-trees, and set up a

130

SONGS AND REVELS

babel of cawing before deciding where to breakfast, and
several foolish pairs pretend to repair their nests. Then
the thrush sings, his ringing notes taking the mind back
to the days of white violets. A chiffchaff cries his two
notes with the zest of a March day. Over a stubble the
larks course and court, soar and sing in rivalry. And in
a walnut-tree a band of starlings greets the day with
mysterious incantations, warbling and whistling in
chorus for an hour on end.

IN a land of farms, like Essex, we may walk for miles
across country by following little tracks by
Sentries the hedgerows, and to do so is to realize
of the the marvellous abundance of bird life in

Hedge Autumn. All the way you hear eager alarm-
notes, and the rustling of affrighted wings,
like the noise of wind in a poplar tree, as the flocks of
sparrows and finches, titmice and many others drift
away down the hedge before you. The blackbird is
sentinel-in-chief, well supported by the wary mistle-
thrush, who flies from the hawthorn with harshly-
grating notes of annoyance; wrens scold at you for a
trespasser, jays screech in execration, and that ever-
vigilant sentry, the little owl, barks like a watch-dog.
Only the larks, if you put them up as you take a path
across a stubble, greet you with a song; but this may
be in the nature of a battle-cry.

PROTECTIVE measures for goldfinches seem to have

borne fruit, and merry-hearted flocks make

Proud a typical picture of the season as they quest

Tailor eternally for thistle-seeds. They have

peculiar claims for protection, because of

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

their good work in eating weed seeds, and they seem to
fall an easy prey to their foes, to garden cats, and to
sparrow-hawks. It is another misfortune of the gold-
finch that he is a favourite cage-bird, because of his
silvery voice and golden wings. A cock goldfinch seems
to be well aware of the glory of his wings, when in
courting days he stretches them out, fanwise, just far
enough to show off the golden bars, like a tailor dis-
playing the gorgeous pattern of a cloth — whence,
perhaps, his old name, Proud Tailor.

BEECHES with ripe beechmast now become scenes of
high revels. The brown and orange canopy
Beech- of the leaves may hide from view every one
Tree of a great flock of feasting wood-pigeons.

Revellers On a dry twig snapping, it is then startling
to hear a hundred pigeons crashing forth on
loud-clapping wings. The babel is too much for the
nerves of the timorous squirrels who have been feeding
respectfully on the ground, and all make helter-skelter
for the tree-trunks. Their one idea is to cheat intruders'
eyes by keeping still. After one spring from the ground,
as the sharp claws of the outspread feet take hold of
the trunk, the squirrel stays fast, spread-eaglewise,
anxiously peering over his shoulder, and as motionless
as any lamented ancestor, stuffed and mounted in a
glass case. With the next spring — made perhaps ten
minutes later — he puts the tree-trunk between the
enemy and his nobility.

THIS merry forester, the squirrel, seems to feast all day
now, as if intent on fattening himself against winter

132

SPORTING WAYS AND DAYS

The sleep ; or he is busy in storing provender in

Squirrel's mysterious corners. Squirrels are wonder-
Day fully faithful to favoured haunts, and there

are woodland glades where one may always
see a few at their revels at this season, six or seven of
the bright-eyed creatures, frisking and feasting in jovial
company. They are always in a hurry, as they skurry
amid the fallen leaves, or gnaw at nuts, sitting on their
haunches, with tails upstanding and hands to mouths.
In some hollow of a beech's roots the larder may be
found, stored with beechmast, chestnuts, fir-cones,
acorns, hazel-nuts, and hips and haws; certainly the
squirrel is a forester, for he plants many trees.

SPORTING WAYS AND DAYS

IN our fathers' day the upland forest country of Sussex
was a home for blackgame, and famous for
Snaring woodcock. The season for 'cock now being
Woodcock at hand, we may recall that they were
commonly taken by poachers in springes,
which have been in use in Sussex for centuries, and are
still set occasionally for pheasants. The springe is made
by bending down any flexible wand which grows at the
chosen place, or one cut for the purpose, a simple,
trigger-like arrangement keeping it bent like a bow.
To the tip of the wand is fastened a length of string,
with a running noose. On the woodcock running his
head into the noose the trigger is released, the wand
flies upright, and the bird is gibbeted, like a felon, in
mid-air. On either side of the run herbage is woven, so
as to " weir," as the poacher would say, the bird to the
snare.

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SPORTSMEN sometimes notice a remarkable point about
woodcock — that when one is shot, having
A been flushed from some dell which always

Woodcock looks as if it would suit a woodcock for his
Mystery day-time doz.ing, another, within a day or
two, takes possession of the same quarters.
Several birds like to keep solitary state in their own
little realms in Winter and may have a very human
envy of others' realms — certainly a garden corner,
which is ideal in one robin's view, will be occupied
eagerly by another if the chance comes. In days when
it was thought no crime to shoot kingfishers on sight,
the old school of sportsmen-naturalists often noted how
one kingfisher would take a fallen bird's place, as
mysteriously and as surely as a widowed cock sparrow-
hawk will attract a fresh bride. So anglers tell how a big
trout, taken from a favoured hover, is succeeded by
another, presumably the next in size and power.

THE little quail, that miniature partridge (though lack-
ing the partridge's ideal of monogamy), is
Quails more familiar in game- dealers' stores in
town in Winter than as a dweller in our
countrysides ; but it has been observed wintering in the
Isle of Wight, and in the course of what sportsmen
knew of old, when the bird was plentiful, as a " Quail
Year," it will linger through the Winter of our warm
West country. Unfortunately the quail has a reputation
as the most appealing of all game-birds to the gourmet.
After harvesting-days, when consorting with part-
ridges, and when put up in their company by the
beaters, they have often been spared a shot from being
mistaken for " squeakers." One of the quail's names

134

OWLS — AND OTHERS

well hits off its shrill, threefold call-note — " dacty-
lisonans," and another classical name, " Coturnix," also
suggests the sound of those pleasant notes of Spring.
They are neatly rendered by the phrase, " Whet-my-
lips."

OWLS — AND OTHERS

THE white owl is armed at every point as a night-
hunter, with its great eyes, large ears,
Silent deadly talons, and soft feathers that make

Wings its flight as buoyant as thistle-down. There
is no clapping of wings, no whirring. Man's
sensitive ears may possibly hear the beating of some
butterflies' wings ; but the white owl flies as silently as
a ghost. Even when it stoops to its prey it falls like a
fluttering rose-petal. The silent flight is considered to
be a provision of nature to prevent the mouse hearing ;
but it is as likely to provide against any noise which
would interfere with the owl's own hearing.

THE dusk of an Autumn evening may find the barn-owl
on the wing, quartering a field, in a slow
Mobbing but in so certain a way that no mouse
the Owl could hope to escape, or working up and
down a hedgerow, missing nothing. The
brown owl hunting by daylight is a rarer sight, and one
most enraging to other birds. It is wonderful to see
how quickly a crowd gathers to mob the owl affer its
first mellow halloo has rung out. The ever-gallant
mistle-thrushes may be in the van of the attack, backed
by screaming blackbirds, and a scolding rout of tits and
finches , and they maintain an uproar even after the owl has

135

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

settled, while the little wren diligently sounds his watch-
man's rattle. The owl must regret wakinguptoo early.

A REGULAR winter visitor is the short-eared owl, the
" grass-owl " of the falconers, that has a
Our marked habit of frequenting open fields,

Winter and there hunts and roosts. It hunts by
Owl day as by night, and there is small hope for

any prey it attacks, furred, feathered, or
scaly. The owls come to our east coast in small parties
about twenty strong, which presently disperse, but
before doing so are sometimes encountered, sitting in
the open fields, by partridge shooters. They are fond
of river meadows, such as are haunted by meadow -
pipits, whom they seem to regard as excellent morsels
off which to dine.

THE short-eared, owl the " Woodcock Owl," which
comes in with the 'cock, and usually departs
Owls Like in the days of white violets, is among the
Cherubim long list of the foes of fieldmice and voles,
which includes, besides owls of all sorts,
buzzards, kestrels, and the small seagulls, foxes, stoats,
weasels, rooks, crows, great black-backed gulls, ravens
and adders. It is like the owl called " little " in that
it hunts by day. A haunter of moors and fenlands, it
squats close to the grass, and is sometimes flushed by
shooters among turnips. A humorous sporting picture
might be drawn from life — the dogs standing at point,
and a surprised sportsman putting up, instead of the
expected covey, a number of short-eared owls, which
solemnly set sail, looking, in one sportsman's phrase,
like the cherubim of churchyard tombstones.

136

AUTUMN TONES

THE buzzard is happily among our birds which have
increased since the war, and its melancholy
A Proud cry is now heard on the chalk hills of the
Winged home counties as from the cliffs of Corn-
Hazvk wall. No doubt the bird was numerous of
old in the great oak woods of Sussex, where
it went by the name of " puttock." Its individuality is
strongly marked. The flight, steady and sedate, is of
proud and dignified sort; it seems to sail through the
air, scarcely moving the wings. As it grandly soars, it
gives an impression of size — it looms large like an
eagle. It is very faithful to one haunt and to a favourite
perch, where it sits motionless by the hour, dozing — or
else waiting for the chance to swoop on a rabbit, rat,
mouse, frog, mole or worm, in the stealthy, pouncing
way of the owls. Its presence strikes a very wild note in
any peaceful place it may haunt.

AUTUMN TONES

THE claret-hued leaves of elder-bushes strike a glowing
Autumn colour-chord in hedgerows and in
An such jungles on chalk hills as where the

Autumn badgers have their holts. The elder's
Note history is a remarkable one, and goes back

to dark ages when man found that the
stems made a good tube for music-pipes. The name in
many countries is derived from Sambucus, the ancient
bagpipe of elder-stems, though it seems more probable
that the tree would give its name to the instrument.
Piers Plowman called it the " eller," a word derived
from the Saxon for kindler, the stem serving for a blow-

137

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

pipe. Shakespeare referred to its pea-shooting uses:
" That's a perilous shot out of an elder gunne."

IN a woodland glade that smells of Autumn, among
dying bracken and verdant moss, is a
Toadstool cluster of the most gorgeous of toadstools,
Lore the fly agaric, in vivid scarlet cap. Some

say that the man who eats it will pass from
intoxication through delirium to death; others think
its reputation has suffered unjustly from its having
poisonous relatives, one of which is called the " des-
troying angel." Near the agaric grows a tall parasol
mushroom with a movable ring on its tall stalk; this
has a good repute, and the fungophagist argues that the
hollow left when the stem is pulled off was expressly
intended by Nature for the insertion of a butterpat
when the mushroom was a-frying.

WHERE bands of titmice go a-roving through the
Autumn woods there is a chance of enjoy-
Sing ing the exceptional pleasure of identifying

Willow, a new British bird in the person of the
Tit Willow willow-tit. Some good authorities are of
opinion that it is now becoming widely
distributed, though it is little known, has a history only
of some twenty-five years in this country, and is hardly
to be distinguished from the marsh-tit. It is known by
the dullness of its cap, the brownish hue of its flanks,
and the sign of a curiously rounded tail. Quiet in habit,
a study in greyish-brown (and quiet also in habits), it
is in harmony with the shady, marshy woods it specially
favours.

138

AUTUMN TONES

A SUDDEN outburst of Autumn song from a wren, ending
with trilling notes, and ending most
Lyrical abruptly, seems to bid us take heart of
Wrens grace, and to throw off such melancholy
ideas as the pathetic whistling of the robin
would persuade us are suited to the season. Two wrens
in a garden will sing one against the other, in strophe
and antistrophe; on one song culminating in its trill,
the other begins so certainly that it sounds as if one bird
were singing without pause. The wren is justly famed
for singing in unexpected places and times, even at
night or in snow-time, and sometimes when on the
wing: now seeming to enjoy a duet, then to be testing
its voice against a rival's.

THE mellow cawing of rooks on October mornings, as
they visit their old nest-trees, or forage
Music of among walnut trees (their favourite tree-
the Fall inns to-day), always seems in harmony with
Autumn's mood ; as does the pathos in the
robin's song, and the inflected whistling of the chimney-
pot's solitary starling. A note which often breaks the
prevailing silence of " The Fall " is the call of the nut-
hatch, a liquid " quit, quit, quit," which may be heard
for twenty minutes on end in orchard and garden. A
wise thrush may carol; linnets give evening concerts;
but it is to the robin that we are more indebted for
music than to all others ; there seem to be robins singing
on every hand throughout a countryside.

Rooks lose no chance of bullying the harmless kestrel,
which easily evades their attacks, or of giving chase to

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Rook a heron which may drift over their hunting-

Feuds grounds. Several rooks will make after the

heron with a great turn of speed, easily
overtaking their majestic quarry, flying above, below,
and ahead, not attacking, but persistently herding him
away. The feud between 'them seems almost traditional.
Should a heron pass over a rookery, he will be attacked
even more furiously, then may cry in alarm, lose his
calm dignity, and throw himself into pitiful attitudes
of distress. Rooks have been known to expel herons
from their heronry ; but the victory does not always go
to the sable brotherhood.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

IN Autumn we may have the good fortune to see rare
birds on migration, birds unknown in our
A Bird own countryside. There may come to a
Simpleton valley of the South Downs a small flock,
or trip, of those handsome and confiding
little plovers, the dotterels, who chose to linger on the
hills, their last barrier before the sea, on their way to
the far south from the far north. To their unwariness
they owe their name, from the word to dote — to be fond
and simple — and their scientific name, " morinellus,"
signifies a little dotard. The simpleton bird has paid
dearly for his foolishness in allowing man to net and
shoot him with ease, to make what our forefathers called
" a daintie dish," and to make trout-fishing flies of his
feathers.

Now the last broods of the house-martins fly from the

nests beneath our cottage eaves. For more than five

140

THE FALL

The months, from mid- April, the cottage has

Swallows been their parents' home. Their sweet, fleet
Retire forms will be sadly missed, and their

music of the eaves, that mysterious, long-
sustained warbling that comes from the nest, hour
after hour. At night, it suggests a lullaby, as if the birds
are crooning one another to sleep. They have flown on
the first stage of their journey to Africa, to some deep
valley of the South Downs, running seawards. To such
valleys the swallows bred in the villages at the foot of
the Downs have also retired, and there may be seen in
some force, lingering on the verge of the sea, as if
loath to leave this pleasant land.

THE FALL

As Spring " comes slowly up our way," Autumn's
victory over Summer is a long-drawn
Autumn s affair. A bouquet of Summer flowers may
Victory be picked to-day on the chalk downs,
where harebells hold their own, or where a
second crop of honeysuckle perfumes a hedge. Oak-
woods cling long to their midsummer greenery, but
Autumn gains an early and sweeping victory in the
beech-woods, now turning to a foxy red; Autumn's
torch will set half a wood ablaze in one night. The
gales which followed the equinox have stripped some
trees of leaves : those gales which are only to be expected
before and after the halcyon days of St. Luke's Summer,
and are not unwelcome in rustic weather-lore, as is
suggested by the old toast to —

A good October and a good blast

To blow the hog acorn and mast.

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

A BREATH of Winter puts " Finis " to chapters in-
numerable of insect life, and in gardens
Ladybirds and lanes we miss their teeming multitudes,
and mourn for butterfly and bee. We may
shed no tear over the passing of the wasp. Daddy-
longlegs is an engaging creature, but we remember he
springs from the pestilential leather-jacket. Rosarians
and hop-growers, and all true lovers of roses and beer,
will regret the vanishing of the pretty and ever- welcome
ladybirds. Their life-work is mainly for the benefit of
roses and hops, as alike in larval and perfect state they
live on greenfly, mysteriously crossing the Channel to
find their prey : Dover's cliffs have been painted scarlet
by incoming swarms of these fairy-like beetles.

142

NOVEMBER

•7.

NOVEMBER

IN a Garment of Changeable Green and Black upon
his Head, a garland of Olives with the Fruit in his
Left hand, Bunches of Parsnips and Turnips in his
Right. His Sign Sagittarius.

SONGS OF CHEER

As Winter comes on, the robin's pride of place in the
garden becomes more and more distin-
A guished. What happens in Winter to Cock

Crowing Robin's wife and family is always mys-
Hen terious. The robins like to live hermitwise,

each in its domain, couples separating,
however faithfully mated. Some naturalists now state
as a proven fact that the hen robin has an Amazonian
nature, and fights, as well as her little swashbuckler of
a lord, to defend her chosen territory, and will sing. The

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

quality of robins' songs varies much, and the feebler
songs are now credited to the hens; who, it is believed,
sing only in Winter, in challenge or in triumph after
battle.

THE hedge-sparrow is the humblest of all song-birds.

He is always demure, gentle, and homely,
Winter alike as to his song and his manner of life.
Cheer If he haunts a garden bird-table he rarely

comes to the board, but is content to pick
up the crumbs that fall, and always offers up grace
before and after meat. Simply as he warbles his unpre-
tending lay we owe him a debt for this song of Winter
cheer — he will sing though the land be buried in snow.
From this perhaps came one of his familiar names,
" Winter Fauvette " — names all so much better than
his proper one, since he is no sparrow. Hedge-warbler
well suits him, if less distinctive than " Dunnock," or
" Shufflewing," from his habit of flirting his wings when
courting. Now and then he sings after dark.

LEAST of the bird musicians of Winter is the corn-
bunting. He plays the triangle in the winter
The Clod band for the twenty other performers. His
Bird music (more in harmony with golden corn-

fields than pale winter sunshine) is in
keeping with his lethargic appearance ; he is a veritable
clod-hopper among birds, and was well-named clod-
bird from his habit of perching on any little elevation of
a flat field. His monotonous song starts off like an
imitation of the yellow hammer's, but it lacks any musical
merit, and tumbles all to pieces, as soon as started, in a
confused jumble.

146

SONGS OF CHEER

BESIDE the dove, the white-bibbed dipper is beginning
his Winter song, a sweet, if low-pitched
A melody. The Derbyshire dippers may seek

Burnside out mudflats of tidal rivers as Winter comes
Minstrel on; others are faithful to their favourite
river-stretches the year through. A North-
country name is " Betty dowker," a dowker being one
who continually bobs the head, as the dipper does
unceasingly while it jerkily flits from rock to rock, or
runs or oars itself with its wings in the stream. This
little bird always strikes a pleasing note, alike by its
lively presence and its charming Winter song.

OUR fathers dubbed the little wren, " troglodyte "; and
it is a veritable cave-bird in hard weather
The Cave and in snow-time, when in some deep old
Bird lane it spends the day hopping in and out

of the hedgebank's holes and crannies,
among the exposed tree-roots. Here it picks up a fat
living when birds of the open are reduced by two days'
snow to skeletons, when redwings are to be picked up
from the hedgerows, and the song is frozen in the lark's
throat. Wrens of stream-sides live in the manner of
snipe during frosts, and their tiny rounded wings and
long bills for probing allow them to slip readily through
the frozen grasses of the banks. The French call the
wren, " Father of the woodcock," from a similarity in
the plumage of the birds, whose habits have this curious
affinity.

SOME Cornish naturalists claim that their little home-
keeping wren of the stone hedge is a distinct race,

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Home- like the St. Kilda wren, and that its family
keeping was settled in the Far West before the
Wrens Bronze Age. Perhaps the wren is nowhere

more plentiful than in Cornwall, where
every length of stone hedge has a wren to sing in
Summer and Winter; while it abounds on the rocky
coast, outpouring its brilliant lyric above the roar of the
Atlantic. The wren's Winter song may arise from its
deep-seated nesting instinct, which makes a cock wren
build several nests and roost in old ones.

THE YEAR'S SUNSET

IN the woods the year fades apace, with all its " dreams
of greatness." Now that the leaves have
The fallen, like the year's hopes, interest tends

Titmouse to focus on fox and pheasant. Other long-
Rout tails which relieve the sadness of the Fall

are the charming long-tailed tits — " Mum-
ruffins " as country boys used to call them, leading a
gypsy life, and following their leader among the leafless
but budding branches: suggesting flights of arrows.
Probably the party is made up of one family only ; this
titmouse believes in large families. Where a Winter
party a score strong is seen, there is presumptive evi-
dence that the father of the family is a bigamist.

WOODLAND FOLK

IN the wintry beech-woods many feasters are still dis-
covered enjoying the beech-mast, and the
The loud "Pink, pink!" calls of a flock of

Battling chaffinches, in their harlequin array, tell of
Finch their good hunting among the fallen leaves ;

148

WINTER GUESTS

or it is a cloud of bramble-finches among the mast
which hold the eye by their1 tawny plumage:
the chaffinches' nearest relatives. That our cheery
chaffinch is the genuine original finch is suggested by
its old Teutonic names, Vink and Fink (which we have
translated to finch), derived from the call-note. It is a
bird of many local names, like copper, white or silver
finch, and chink, pink and twink. The old-time bird-
catchers knew that a decoy chaffinch, by its aggressive
notes of challenge, would draw a variety of other birds
to their doom on limed sticks, and gave it the proud
name of Battling Finch.

A WOOD may seem asleep in January ; but at once there
is a sense of liveliness when a roving band
The of the long-tails drifts waywardly along,

Titmouse spilling tinkling notes ; these are among the
Rout least sounds of the wood, yet ring distinctly,

as the birds flit about the branches in their
haphazard way, as often as not landing on twigs upside-
down. Their lightsome flight suggests care-free hearts ;
and in this they are in marked contrast to the tree-
creepers that like to bear them company, and spend all
their day in climbing tree-stems. The tree-creeper is
perhaps the most silent, serious, and purposeful of the
birds in the wood, a pattern of diligence to the rollicking
titmouse crew.

WINTER GUESTS

A WEEK of Winter brings the fieldfares in force from

their northern homes to our open meadows,

Foreign where they at once seek the hedgerow

Thrushes berries. In warm weather, when well fed,

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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

they are the most vigilant of birds, but a cold snap
quickly robs them of their wariness. If alarmed, as
they sit moodily in some moist, lowland meadow,
perhaps in association with snipe, instead of their alert
flight, with the loud, throaty chucklings, they flutter
weakly to the nearest cover. The handsomest of the
thrushes, these foreigners lack the fine spirit and
strength of our own stormcocks.

A CERTAIN gamekeeper shot a crow, and hung it by the
neck on a lonely woodland gibbet. This
Honey in sacrifice on his game-bird's altar took place
the Carcass some time ago, and was forgotten ; but when
lately passing the gibbet as dusk was falling,
the keeper observed that his victim's carcass harboured
a wren's nest of dry leaves, cunningly woven among the
bones. He probed it with his stick, whereupon came a
fluttering of agitated wings, and wren upon wren —
" there seemed a score at least," he assured us — shot
forth from the strange dormitory. It reminded us of
Scott's fine lines about the fieldfare nesting among the
bones of a slain warrior :

Beneath the broad and ample bone,
That bucklered heart to fear unknown,
A feeble and a timorous guest,
The Fieldfare framed her lowly nest.

It is supposed by bird-authorities that the poet con-
fused the fieldfare with the snow-bunting.

"A SHEPHERD saw, as he thought, some white
larks on a down above my house this winter; were

WINTER GUESTS

The Snow not these the snow-flake? " asked Gilbert
Bird White, and seemed satisfied that they were

stragglers from migrating flocks. We may
claim the snow-flake or snow-bunting for a British bird,
since it breeds in the Highlands, but more is seen of
those that appear in Winter on our eastern shores.
Pretty, active little birds, they add a welcome liveliness
to marsh and mudflat. Arctic travellers say that against
the snow the white parts of the black and white forms
are lost to view, and the birds look like a flock of black
butterflies. But when seen against our grey winter skies
the white-flecked plumage takes the eye as a flock rises,
and wheels compactly, and settles again to the music of
tinkling calls.

AMONG the choicest of our bird visitors in Winter —
though all too irregular a visitor — is the
Bird winsome little siskin, a charming study in

Magicians lemon and black. It haunts delightful places
— to the writer its name conjures at once a
picture of a Sussex forest gill, with alders bordering a
stream, and the birds searching for seeds in the trees in
pretty tit-like attitudes, all members of a flock twittering
to one another as they feed. Sociable birds, they like
the company of redpolls, linnets, and other country
cousins. The skilful way they hide their nests when
building in pines or firs in the North gave rise to a
siskin legend — that they make the nests invisible by
putting magic stones among the eggs.

A RARE pleasure of a cold winter spell is to fall in
with a party of waxwings, or Bohemian chatterers,

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Bohemian beautiful and gentle little birds, famed for
Chatterers having some of their feathers tipped as with
strands of sealing-wax. They are further
adorned with silky crests and gold-tipped tails. Sociable
creatures, travelling in flocks several hundreds strong,
they seem well disposed' to one another, and though
tame and artless, are quick to raise their crests if
alarmed, uttering tit-like notes of warning. They are
famed also for their lively appetites, and make no more
ado about swallowing a rose-hip than a haw or a privet-
berry. The name, chatterer, is ill- deserved, as the gay-
looking birds are remarkably silent.

CROSSBILLS, though among our birds which are familiar
by name, are rarely seen as at fitful intervals
British they roam in pine- woods. They are remark-
Parrots able in many ways, as for their parrot-like
bills with the curved and crossed points,
and for the variation of their rich green, yellow and
crimson hues. They are well likened to parrots, since
they use their bills for pulling themselves about the
branches, and have a parrot-like way of eating. It is
supposed that the peculiar bill allows such a twist to be
given to a fir-cone that the seed falls directly into the
mouth. They are famed for their tameness, for they
will split their cones within hand's reach of a quiet
observer.

MANY active little birds delight in Winter in the groves

of young alders, watered by some stream,

The which countrymen call an alder-holt. They

Alder-Holt are the haunts of restless, ever-cheerful

siskins, in their olive-green coats, who may

SHORE-BIRDS

be joined by goldfinches and lesser redpolls, the three
species hunting the alders for food in happy company.
The loud, clear call-note of the siskins, who are never
still a moment, suggests the coal-tit's call, and a band
of this titmouse may join forces with their party. Or a
pack of long-tailed titmice will keep them company for
awhile. Ten or twenty of the long- tails will flit in
quick succession through the trees, the one in front
luring on the next by its shrill note, showing that they
find the alder-holt an ideal place for their eternal game
of follow-my-leader.

SHORE-BIRDS

AMONG beautiful bird pictures that belong more
especially to Winter is that of a flock of
Sea Snipe dunlin drifting over beach, sands, or mud-
flats. The flock wheels as one, now showing
the dark upper plumage, then the white underparts; it
is like a smoky cloud that suddenly flashes with silver
light. The graceful little birds make a charming picture,
too, when feeding, as they pursue retreating waves to
dart on their prey, and run like silvery specks over the
grey mudflats, all chattering and eagerly dibbling, happy
in their element of ooze and sea-wrack. Being the most
abundant of our migratory waders they have come by
many local names — churre and purre from the mournful
whistle, and stint, oxbird, sea-lark and sea-snipe, while
when they leave the coasts, to breed in the lonely moor-
land haunts of the plover, they are " plovers' pages."

THE turnstone is almost the most abundant of our
smaller shore-birds, a bird famous for the awl-shaped

153

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Autolycus beak with which it turns the stones and
of the debris sheltering sandhoppers and such

Shore unconsidered trifles. Turnstones know the

benefit of co-operation when the sea has
cast up a large fish too heavy for one to turn. On such
occasions some will dig the sand below the fish, while
others work to turn it from the other side. In one sports-
man's story, a salmon, while being thus overturned,
toppled over so suddenly that it imprisoned one
of the digging party, on which the sportsman's spaniel
of its own accord ran in, rescued the bird, and brought
it uninjured to his master. A feeding flock of turnstones
makes one of the most amusing bird pictures of the
longshore. The way they hunt among the flotsam and
jetsam of the sands, the stones, dead fish, driftwood,
seaweeds, and shells for their crustacean fare, shrimps
and sandhoppers, has been well likened to a man tossing
hay. Sometimes all their efforts go to the benefit of
others, as some more agile wader darts upon and steals
their treasure-trove.

NOISIEST and wariest of shore-birds is the redshank;

they say that its shrill and piercing note
The may be heard on a still day a mile away, an

Marsh's alarm well understood by the other waders.
Sentry At all seasons these keen sentries greet

trespassers with wild cries, especially in
nesting days, when they circle overhead, or dash down
as if to mob the intruder ; very graceful they are as they
wheel about, the quivering flight alternating with
poising, when they hang on wings pointing stiffly
downwards. Like others of its kind, the redshank plays

154

THE HIBERNATORS

the pathetically threadbare tricks of fluttering as if
hurt, to lure intruders from its young.

AT the sign of the poulterer the golden plover takes the
eye, with its gold-speckled plumage, which
Golden on its native moor is at one with the
Plover heather, grasses, green turf, black peat and
white cotton-grass. Marshes, mudflats, and
sandbanks are now its haunt, and to our coasts come
migratory plover forces from northern climes, in waves
that may flow on far to the south of the equator. Their
whistling cry is a pleasant and musical sound, without
the mournfulness of the peewit's wail. Golden plover
may be tame on arriving at the coast, but grow wary
if their life is sought, and will hardly stay in the same
parish as the man with a gun.

THE HIBERNATORS

THE dormouse, fat on nuts and acorns, has retired for
the Winter, judging by a dozen inhabited
The nests found in one small thicket. There is

Seventh good proof, though the point is disputed,
Sleeper that he lays up a store of nuts against the
day of waking. In the oval grass-ball that
is his dormitory he fits, wound in his tail, as closely as
the yolk of an egg in the shell, and his sleep -is twin-
brother of death. All his ways are ways that are dark;
he sleeps for two-thirds of his life, and when awake
hunts mostly by twilight and in the night, keeping to
cover where he is safe from owls. It seems a dull life;
as dull as that of his cousin, the squirrel, seems merry.

155

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

A PIPISTRELLE bat is among the regular attendants at
evensong in an old country church, and
The Bat throughout the service hawks back and
in Church forth in the nave, making marvellous twists
and turns among the many obstacles in its
path, low rafters, banners, candelabra, and a great
suspended crucifix. It passes them by a hair's-breadth,
and one can hardly fail to watch and admire its flying
skill. Certainly the church bat is a distraction to choir-
boys. One wonders how it finds a living. It may sleep
through the week when the church is closed. Awakened
by the warmth and lights of Sunday, possibly it suffers
from a recurring delusion that Spring is come.

A PRIVATEER

IN an old deer park there has been daily evidence of
late of the presence of a sparrow-hawk —
The Spar'- the damning evidence of lightly-spread
Hawk rings of feathers, usually of finches, some-
times of thrush or fieldfare, occasionally of
a partridge or wood-pigeon. Among the relics may be a
few drops of blood, and perhaps fragments of a beak,
claw, or shattered skull. But you may cross the park
daily, and rarely see another sign of the privateer. The
noble peregrine, the patient kestrel, and the lazy buz-
zard, hunt openly. But the spar'-hawk dashes stealthily
over hedges, pounces round corners and through gaps,
and comes and goes like a shadow, only leaving these
pitiful rings of feathers to tell of his hunting.

THE wild garden of a Sussex manor-house is

now supplying an excellent opportunity for studying

156

A FARMER'S FRIENDS AND FOES

A Wild the habits of the sparrow-hawk. In the
Garden's garden-marsh is a dense patch of bamboo,
Dragon whither a flock of starlings resort nightly,
finding it a desirable roosting-place. But
always the sparrow-hawk is lying in wait, like some
fabled dragon, and he never fails to take his toll. So
he has been known to devote his exclusive attention to
one small bit of wild fenland, striking at every teal that
comes in, and to haunt a spinney where he can dine
off wood-pigeon for a long season. But we hope that a
good thing credited to Sam Weller was not taken from
life : " I'll be with you in a minute, as the sparrow-hawk
said when he heard the robin singing round the
corner."

A FARMER'S FRIENDS AND FOES

WHEN the lights are out in the farmhouse kitchen, the
crickets come forth for their midnight
Cricket of revels, and at this season atoms of baby
the Hearth crickets appear, learning to run and leap.
Gilbert White delighted in surprising his
kitchen crickets with a candle, as they sported on his
hearth at Selborne, to note how their guardians would
utter two or three shrill notes, as a signal to all to bolt
to their crannies. Crickets are fastidious about their
hearths, and sometimes seek fresh quarters by migrating.
They are remarkable examples of insects which have
abandoned the open-air life of their own accord; for
nowhere, according to naturalists, either in the old or
new world, is the house-cricket known to live out-o'-
doors.

157

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

THE farmer is wroth if he finds a mole-cricket among
his potatoes, but probably it is engaged
The only on seeking wire- worms. This insect is

Burrowing built on the lines of the mole, and is
Cricket furnished with digging implements even
more wonderful than the mole's, while it
wears a hood, for sheltering its head, with hairs as fine
as the gentleman's in velvet. The wonder of the creature
is in its powerful front legs, at once digging and cutting
implements, with points like the teeth of a saw, across
which another toothed part of the foot works like a
cutting-blade, to sever roots when burrowing.

AN old farmer gave us an interesting point about old
barns: in his grandfather's time, he said,
Feathered when grain was stored in the great barns,
Mausers a man building a new barn would leave
what was called an " owl hole " under the
gable, so that barn owls might be free to come and go,
and encouraged to hunt the rats and mice. Barns
always have a strong attraction for these owls (as for
sparrows and swallows) ; barns or belfries they seem to
think their ideal nesting sites, though some owls like
holes in trees, even if the tree be already occupied by
nesting jackdaws and starlings. They are in no way
particular about seclusion; and passers-by often hear,
sometimes to their alarm, the heavy snoring of the birds
in the nest.

DECEMBER

DECEMBER

AH O R R I D and fearful aspect, clad in Irish -
Rags, or course Freez girt unto him, upon his
Head three or four Night- Caps, and over them a
Turkish Turbant; his Nose red, his Mouth and Beard
clog'd with Isicles, at his back a bundle of Holly, Ivy
or Misletoe, holding in fur'd Mittens the Sign of
Capricornus.

BIRDS AND THE MAN

THE hurdler complains that hard frost makes his hazel-
rods brittle, so that they snap and spoil his
The output — twelve hurdles a day at his best.

Hurdler It is always fascinating to watch his skill in
splitting the rods and his deftness in their
weaving. Boys will not now submit to the tedious
training the old hurdler underwent in learning how to
cut rods and strip them of knots. The honesty of his
work is transparent, though only experts — and time
and use — discover where one hurdler excels another.
In spite of inevitable rheumatism, a man may enjoy
this clean, honest life spent in the quiet woods. The
161 M

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

hurdler is among the last of our open-air craftsmen:
and his race is dying.

CERTAIN birds are especially associated with human
friends. The wryneck is the woodman's
The bird, its ha\vk-like cry in April giving the

Windmill signal for the stripping of oak-trees' bark.
Thrush The yellow wagtail is a farmer's bird,
ushering in the time of spring sowings. As
the sandpiper is the angler's companion, the wheatear
keeps the shepherd company on lonely downs. Even the
miller has his bird in the redwing, called " windmill
thrush," since the working of its wings suggests the
revolving of a windmill's sails, while it is supposed to
seek shelter by windmills in hard weather. Redwings
now arrive in force; the pity is that few windmills are
left to keep up the traditional association.

WINTER SKETCHES

ONE country sound is most typical of the intense still-
ness of a late Winter afternoon, when, per-
A Dull haps, there is snow on the hills and fog in
Afternoon the vale : the crow of Chanticleer. He likes
to take advantage of the silence to make the
welkin ring. The least sounds seem almost noisy:
acorns pattering on a pond, tinkling notes of titmice;
a blackbird's alarm creates a babel, and a shot in the
wood wakens reverberating echoes. The huntsman's
horn strikes a welcome note of cheer on a dull afternoon ;
and the sense of gloom at dusk is banished for a moment
by the colours of the picture made by hounds jogging
home, the scarlet of a coat, the red of a mask dangling
at a saddle.

162

WINTER SKETCHES

THE huntsman is quick to heed the voice of the jay,
which so often betrays the slipping away of
Reynard's his fox; the gamekeeper, too, appreciates
Betrayers the jay as a spy on the fox, as on poachers
and trespassers ; he is not one to screech for
nothing. The crafty cock pheasant, the ever-vigilant
little owl, and the wren, with his watchman's rattle, are
all quick to raise the alarm when a red shadow fleets
across a woodland ride. And the carrion crow, a scarce
bird to-day, has often been known to follow closely the
movements of a fox when hounds have forced him into
the open.

FIFTY years ago the crow was a common bird of our
woodlands, but it fell on evil days, and
Miniature naturalists would often lament that this
Ravens raven in miniature was following the raven
into a list of vanished fauna. One instinct
was strongly against its chance of surviving shots from
farmers' and gamekeepers' guns, its persistence in re-
turning, March after March, to places where its ances-
tors nested through centuries. Better times have come
for crows, and they are doing much of their own
wisdom to save themselves by adopting the life of town
birds, some even nesting in Hyde Park.

TANGLED clusters of twigs on birch-trees, called witches'

brooms, are commonly mistaken for crows'-

Witches1 nests. In olden days it was naturally sup-

Brooms posed that witches, given to riding on

brooms, specially favoured those which

the obliging tree miraculously produced. Possibly the

curious growths are due to a fungus, which so excites

163

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

the tree that it puts forth many hundreds of buds,
developing into immense clusters of twigs. The brooms
have a picturesqueness, their dark masses contrasting
with the light grace of the tree; it is as if the dainty
" lady of the woods " has sought to set off her charms
by adopting beauty-patches.

THE West Country is specially favoured in Winter by
the graceful presence of grey wagtails, so
Water abundant that at times every rock in the
Sprites bed of a stream seems to have its dancing
sprite. They are great lovers of water, and
rarely stray far from streams (nor could they easily do
so in Devon), finding their living among the water
insects, which they often pursue by nimbly running
over the leaves of water-plants. In a few weeks the
birds will be putting on their black gorgets of courting
days. They share the pied wagtail's love of a ditch,
which possibly gave that bird its puzzling country name,
Dishwasher — a contraction, it may be, of " Ditch-
watcher."

IN a sportsman's view the partridge is never a more
sporting mark than in December. The
Cunning callow birds of September have grown in
Game strength, speed and elusiveness out of all

Birds knowledge. They fly like bullets. Cover is

scanty now, and they have mastered some
marvellous vanishing-tricks. And pheasants, the older
cocks especially, grow ever more cunning as Christmas
looms nearer, trusting their lives more and more to their
strong, swift legs. The craftiest old cock is he who be-
lieves in a solitary life for the time being ; and he may
164

GARDEN BIRDS

elect to roost by himself far from the coverts, in some
lonely tree in open fields.

GARDEN BIRDS

WHEN the garden birds, tamed by cold, troop to the
house windows for food, Dick Dunnock,
Dick the hedge-sparrow (bird of forty names),

Dunnock is sure to have a modest place in the throng,
with his mate beside him. Their hearts are
as faithful as the hearts of a pair of crows, and they are
always side by side, even roosting at night cuddled one
to another. When seen at close quarters, the quiet
beauty of the dunnock's dun plumage is very taking,
as delicately pencilled as a water-rail's.

WHEN a greenfinch is attracted to a garden in Winter,
as by sunflower seeds, he cuts a striking
An figure at the bird-table, for there is some-

Engaging thing prosperous, portly and aldermanic
Finch in his dapper appearance, with his smart

sage-green coat, slashed with yellow. The
greenfinch is not famed for song, though his somewhat
canary-like trilling in season seems full of jollity and
summery ideas; he and his mate are slovenly nest-
builders; but their prosperous air suggests that they
know the art of living well, when others are pressed for
food, and, generally, " times be badish vor the poor."

THE starling is looked upon as a dandy of the bird

world, like the green woodpecker, so

Starling happily named " popinjay," but he might

Fashions claim to enjoy a peculiar range of fashions.

165

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Viewed on a chimney-pot in December sunshine, he
seems to demand admiration for his greenish-black
plumage, wonderfully glossed and burnished with
purple, green and violet reflections, changing in
different lights ; and his spots show bravely. These he
presently discards, to put on his more sheeny wedding-
coat, while his mate remains spotted and speckled, and
is less brilliantly iridescent. The sign of the old English
starling, the " stare," is his green-glossed head, and he
is now a scarce bird in relation to the hordes of Con-
tinental immigrants.

BIRD TRAVELLERS

SEVERE winter weather drives in flocks of the Brent
goose to the East coast, a wary species, and
The much prized by connoisseurs in the gastro-

Scotch nomy of wildfowl: " A Brent for your life,
Goose on the table! " has been recorded as the

emphatic opinion of East Anglian punt-
gunners. This goose, in sooty grey, has a distinctly
snake-like head. The blackness of the head and neck are
relieved by the white neck-patches. It is our commonest
wild goose in Winter. Hardly larger than a common
duck, it is a Tom Thumb beside the magnificent,
yard-long greylag, a bird for which we have a special
regard in that its ancestors gave us our Christmas geese.

ANYONE fortunate enough to see a swallow at this time
need not refuse to believe his eyes. The
The December swallow is not a wonderfully

December rare bird in the West Country. When people
Swallow report very late or early swallows they are

166

BIRD TRAVELLERS

usually informed that they have seen starlings, which
will fly, when in dashing mood and hawking insects in
the air, with much of the swallows' grace and speed.
But there is overwhelming testimony from West-
Country naturalists that in mild seasons the swallow
tribe lingers with us far into December. At Marazion, in
Cornwall, martins have been flying about the cliffs as
late as December iyth, and swallows have been seen in
the south a day later. The loiterers would no doubt be
birds of third broods which missed the day appointed for
general migration in October.

A PRETTY conceit about the phrase, " Showing the
white feather," is that it arose from the
The way the wheatear, that shepherd's com-

White panion, flashes its white rump as it flutters

Feather timidly before any intruder of its haunts,
even before a cloud-shadow. Yet a few
wheatears will face a winter in England, and in the
delicate climate of Cornwall may be found hovering
about the rocks at Land's End. True, these may be
shirking the perils of a sea voyage ; but in another way
the bird of the white feather shows a brave heart, for
it is often the first migrant to come home in March, and
its delicious wild warble is the first Spring song.

THE music of night- wandering birds falls on few ears,
yet Winter's nights have their melodies as
Winter** well as June's. In Devonshire, a country
Night- where owls are marvellously abundant,
Music nights now are loud with mellow hooting,
diversified by the white owl's blood-
curdling shrieks. It is the marsh-man of the East
167

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

Coast who, on a frosty winter's night, marks, at an
immense distance, the wild rushing of the wings
of the wigeon, with which mingles the beautiful
" whee-ou " whistle, a music which comes and goes
like the wind as the company sweeps by, on its multi-
tudinous wings, wheels, retires, and comes again. In
mid- Winter, wigeon feed at night, resting by day on
the sea. Some old flight-shooters say that wigeon-
shooting is like fox-hunting for excitement. Un-
doubtedly the birds are good eating.

DECEMBER CHARACTERS

THE pygmy shrew, that Tom Thumb of mammals,
must have a brave heart to come abroad,
Midget as he will, in sharp frost, and one wonders
Mammals what insects he can find to eat, worms or
small snails ; by day the midget hunter is in
peril from weasels and by night from owls. No doubt a
long spell of frost sends him into a sleep from which
there may be no wakening. The water-shrew also may
be noted running among the stalactites on the banks of
an ice-bound stream, or swimming in the icy water, the
black velvety coat turned to a silvery streak, glimmering,
as if beset with pearls, by the air bubbles it holds. In
the water he is as dry as a duck, and may prove a dainty
tit-bit for a starving pike.

THE water-shrew is at once our most timid and, for his

size, most ferocious animal, a very gallant

An fighter. So timid he is that a passing shadow

Angler's will send him (like a wheatear) scurrying to

Friend the burrow; but he seems to be short-

168

DECEMBER CHARACTERS

sighted and nervous of journeying more than a couple
of yards or so from the bank, nor will he stay long in
the water for fear of soaking his pretty fur. His long
snout is never still, and seems to be to this minute
beast what a trunk is to an elephant. He is among the
angler's favourite companions, like the dipper, the grey
wagtail, and the sandpiper.

WE see little of the winter sleepers, except by chance,
as when a bit of leather is found on a rafter,
The and turns out to be a bat. Deep sleepers

Sleepers may better survive mild winters than light
Awake ones readily tempted abroad. The pipis-
trelle's flight on a mild January day may
well seem to it like a nightmare, in which it is always
about to catch a ghostly insect, but is never nearer a
meal. Hedgehogs are notorious (among gamekeepers)
for waking before their time, and we have even found
one working away at clearing snow from the grass, in
the way of a reindeer. How such a deep sleeper as the
snail knows when to wake up is a curious problem;
perhaps it hears some song-thrush's fervent invitation
to come and be killed.

THE mole's work, obvious on many a fair lawn, now

brings imprecations on his head, for all the

The good he may do by eating beetle-grubs. His

Gentleman reputation is for insatiable voracity, and he

in Black is the picture of gluttony as he eagerly

noses his worm, shakes it, tramples on it,

and savagely mouths it, possibly to press soil from the

body. Nearly blind, with fur-covered eyes smaller than

169

AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

a pin's head, he runs grave, though perhaps to him
unimaginable, risks by tunnelling almost in view of fox,
weasel, badger, heron or owl, and the human mole-
catcher.

MOLES of Devon have another foe to fear in the buz-
zard, a past-master of mole-catching arts.
Mole Sitting in his patient way on a tree or stone

Catchers hedge, the buzzard will watch the work-
ings of a mole as it tunnels in a field, until
the deadly pounce can be made. A Devon mole-catcher
showed the writer a cream-coloured specimen, whose
pelt he hoped to make into a purse, and sell for a
sovereign. He had never heard the statement made in
the " Philosopher's Banquet," published 1633, that
water in which moles are boiled will turn any black
thing white, and expressed some doubt of its truth.

IT is the time of year when a gardener, putting things

to rights, encounters under some old

The flower-pot the beetle called devil's coach-

DeviVs horse, from its fleetness, diabolical aspect,

Coach- threatening attitudes, and jet-black livery.

horse Its distinctive mannerism is the turning

over of its tail-end for the neat folding of

beautiful long wings beneath short cases. It would rank

as a gardener's ally, if he believed it fed on slugs and

insect larvae. Its weapons of defence are its jaws and

its glands, which shoot out a secretion of such evil

odour that a wise bird leaves it alone in disgust, whence

the name, olens. It is an insect skunk.

170

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

MANY birds are opportunists; witness the way the
garden robin appears on the scene as the
Thrushes gardener takes spade in hand, and how the
and Moles skua chases the fishing gulls till they dis-
gorge their catch for his benefit. The
thrush has an eye for moles ; it is an old sign of frost
breaking when thrushes probe mole-hills for worms.
A remarkable instance of a thrush working on the
principle " Opportunity is bald behind," was noted
when one was eagerly following the tunnellings
of an invisible mole just below a lawn's surface,
gobbling up such worms as managed to escape the
mole's jaws.

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS

ONCE again this week, as of old,

Forth to the wood did merry men go
Tfa To gather in the mistletoe.

Mistletoe jt js a curious reflection how badly the
Bough birds have been treated, since time out of
mind, by Christmas raids on holly and
mistletoe, whose berries, ripening late, form a useful
reserve of food. And both holly and mistletoe were
esteemed by the fowler for making bird-lime. The
word mistletoe is traced to the Anglo-Saxon mistl, glue,
and tan, twig. So the grey thrush, named mistletoe
thrush from its delight in the berries, would find the
favourite food-plant turned treacherously to its un-
doing ; and still has cause of complaint in our Christmas
use of the sacred mistletoe bough.
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AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR

EVERY month has its flower, even December: thirty
varieties or more might be found in the
December's month. We may count on finding four
Flowers wildings in bloom, poor things indeed,
which would make a parody of a nosegay —
chickweed, shepherd's purse, red dead-nettle and
groundsel, which, however lowly, nourishes goldfinches,
and when brought to town and sold in the streets gives
a Christmas treat to the Cockney canary. December
could hardly claim any shy primroses or violets (which
peer up at a green winter) and might not care for a
dandelion badge. But there is one flower with a strong
claim to be emblematic of the dark, still days before
Christmas, the furze blossom, now spreading a golden
glory on the heaths. It was to the few flowers of De-
cember that Gilbert White looked for his notes for the
month when drawing up his " Naturalist's Calendar."
He made but nine notes for December, as against
ninety-nine for the month of roses, and seven of the
nine were flower-notes. He saw young lambs on the
eleventh day, and on the next day noted, " Moles work
in throwing up hillocks " ; and closed his calendar by
the thought for December's last day, " In sese vertitur
annus."

172

INDEX

Anemone, 42

Anglers, Four-footed, 15

Apple-names, no

Badger, 60
Bat, 17, 156
Bee, Cuckoo, 125

Humble, 125

Leaf-cutter, 78
Beech-woods, Spring, 45,

59

Autumn, 141
Beetle,Devil's coach-horse,

170

Bindweed, 93
Birds, General Notes

Bird-song,after drought,
102

At dawn, 101
At night, 73, 74,167
In Autumn, 130, 139
In cornfields, 89
In dog-days, 87
In flight, 75
In gardens, 119
In January, 12
In October, 130
In Spring, 4, 12, 21
Of jealousy, 13
Hovering Birds, 40

Birds of park ponds, 54

Nests amid flowers, 63

Sentry birds, 56, 131

The Chats, 69

Tree birds, 79

Winter parties, 152
Blackbird, 19, 20, 45
Blackgame, 106, 117
Bullfinch, 82, 120
Butterfly, Orange-tip, 78

Of July, 97
Buzzard, 83, 137

Chaffinch, 34, 148
Chiffchaff, 39, 49
Coltsfoot, 28
Corn-bunting, 103, 146
Country sounds, 162
Cricket, House, 157

Mole, 158
Crossbill, 152
Crow, 163
Cuckoo, 48, 77
Cuckoopint, 48
Curlew, 38, 1 06

Daddy-longlegs, 124
Dahlia, in
Daisy, 60
Dipper, 145
Dormouse, 155
Dotterel, 140
Dragonfly, 98
Dunlin, 153

Earwig, in
Elder, 137
Eyeb right, 123

173

NDEX

Fieldfare, 149

Flycatcher, Spotted, 81 , 88
Pied, 8 1

Flowers, General Notes
Flowers and Song, 61
Flowers of beech- woods, ,

Hibernators, 169
Hobby, 112
Honeysuckle, 6, 76
Hound-puppies, 6, 76
Hound-puppies, 5
Hurdle-maker, 161

49.91

Cottage gardens, 7

Jackdaw, 31

December, 172

Jay, 74, 80, 94

February, 28

Juniper, 108

January, 9

Walls, 8

Kingfisher, 84

Bellflowers, 108

Green flowers, 27

Ladybird, 142

Fox, 5, 42, 103, 118, 130,

Lark, 13, 25, 26, 40, 62, 76

163

Lilies, Water, 97

Foxglove, 91
Frog, 35

Linnet, 53
Lizard, 89

Frost on Dartmoor, 8

Fungi, 138

Magpie, 46

Furze, 7, 40

Martin, 50, 140

Garden- warbler, 61
Gleaners in cornfields, 117
Glow-worm, 93
Goldfinches, n, 131
Goose, Brent, 74, 166
Grasshopper warbler, 75
Grebe, Crested, 37, 32

Little, 96
Greenfinch, 165
Grouse, 105

Hare, 22

Harvest mouse, 104

Festival, 118
Hawkweed, 90
Hayfield, 77

Hedge-sparrow, 146, 165
Heron, 23, 33, 140

Mole, 169, 170, 171
Moorhen, 24
Moths, Bird-like, 1 1 1

Hawk, 79

In Autumn, 124

Small eggar, 18

New Year greetings, 3
Newt, 36

Nightingale, 65, 66
Nightjar, 66

Orchis, 122

Otter, 102

Owls, Brown, 19, 53, 135

Little, 19, 53

Long-eared, 53

Short-eared, 136

White, 96, 135, 158, 167

174

INDEX

Partridge, 14,54, XI5> JI^>

164

Pasque-flower, 60
Petrel, 107
Pheasant, 2 1, 35, 4 1, 64, 94,

126, 127
Plover, Green, 37

Golden, 37, 155
Poppy, Horned, 107

Quail, 104, 134

Raven, 4
Razorbill, 95

Reading out-of-doors, 90
Redshank, 154
Redwing, 162
Reed-bunting, 83
Robin, 51,52, in, 145
Rook, 22, 23, 32, 139
Rushes, 109

Shepherds, 9, 10
Shepherds-purse, 123
Shrewmouse, 168
Siskin. 55, 151
Snipe, 83, 121
Snow, Tracks in, 41
Snow-bunting, 150
Snowdrop, 26
Sparrow-hawk, 48, 64, 156
Squirrel, 14, 65, 132
Starling, 34, 80, 165
Stitch wort, 47
Strawberry, 91
Sunflower, no
Swallow, 49, 50, 63, 112,
i 20, i 66

Swan, 95

Swift, 51,67,97, 113

Teazel, 122
Thrush, 20, 171

Nest, 21
Tiger-beetle, 69
Titmouse, Great, 22

Long-tailed, 33, 148,
149

Marsh, 52

Willow, 138
Toad, 36
Toadflax, 43
Tree-creeper, 56, 63
Trout, 14
Turnstone, 153
Turtle-dove, 63, 94

Wagtail, Pied, 76, 121

Grey> 53. J&4
Wallflower, 27
Wasp, 125

Giant-tailed, 109
Water boatman, 15
Waxwing, 151
Wheatear, 25, 38, 167
Wigeon, 168

" Witches Brooms ", 163
Whitethroat, 68, 69
Woad, 92
Woodcock, 133
Wood-pigeon, 31, 119, 132
Woodpecker, 18, 79, 80
Wood sorrel, 46
Wren, 139, 147

Nest, 150
Wryneck, 39

Yellow hammer, n, 105

175

The Westminster Press

41 xa Harrow Road

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